In addition to change of address for certain employment based I-485′s, the I-485 form itself has changed, and the revision dated 12/3/09 is the only edition acceptable for filing. U.S.C.I.S. is allowing a transitional period up to March 29, 2010, during which it will accept prior versions of the form, but after that, any previous versions of the form that are submitted will be rejected.

Read the full story on ILW

• The first is through the annual “green card diversity lottery,” held each year by the Department of Homeland Security, for citizens of countries that have “low rates of immigration” to the United States. Millions of people from specified countries around the world apply to take part in the lottery, but only 50,000 green cards are made available through the process. Each participant in the lottery is issued a number, the government draws about 150,000 numbers, and the people with those numbers then are allowed to apply for one of the 50,000 slots.

• The second way to gain legal entry is to be a spouse, sibling, child or parent of an American citizen or the spouse or minor child of someone who holds a green card and is willing to sponsor your entrance into the United States.

• The third is through an employer, who must complete a lengthy application process that requires proof that the has a unique skill necessary to the business.

THERE ARE other provisions of immigration law that allow people who are seeking asylum to gain legal entry into the country, but being granted asylum is an extraordinarily difficult process.

An additional number of other immigrants are admitted each year under temporary work permits and student visas, however those visas generally do not permit conversion to immigrant status, and they require the holder to leave after a specified length of stay.

And then there is the “S” visa. Essentially a free pass, the visa is awarded only to those who work for law enforcement and must be applied for by law-enforcement officials. The Mayas say immigration officials promised them the “S” visa, but then reneged.

According to immigration officials, only 250 “S” visas are available each year, and fewer than 60 were awarded in 2009.

CONGRESS last year set immigration visa limits at 700,000 for employment and family preferences, excluding refugees and those entering the country on temporary work or student visas.

In 2008, the total number of immigrants admitted to the country (excluding refugees and those on temporary non-tourist visas) tallied just under 750,000.

Source: Daily Free Man

Matt, originally from Corning and now living in Rochester, is a U.S. citizen. Heather, who met her husband in 2005 when both were students at the Elim Bible Institute in Lima, is from Hamilton, Ontario, and a Canadian citizen. They thought that once they were married, it would be simple for Heather to get her “green card” and live and work legally here with Matt until they have enough money to finish their degrees and start the family they both want.
For more than a year, they had traveled back and forth to Canada without incident until June 26 (the day before the wedding at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington) when Matt told the Canadian border guards that marriage was the reason for his visit.

“I was turned away at the border,” Matt says. “I had to prove I had a means of departing and that I would return.” He hurried back to Rochester, got a letter from his boss indicating that he has a job, made a copy of his apartment lease, and purchased a return airplane ticket (even though he planned to drive home). He stayed in Canada as a visitor for several weeks before coming home to Rochester, but that’s when the couple realized living together would not be as simple as they hoped.

The U.S. and Canadian governments want to be certain that a marriage between citizens of their countries is legitimate, that the citizen spouse can support the non-citizen, and that the newcomer will not need public assistance, says Rochester lawyer Margaret Catillaz, an expert in immigration law.

Since Heather and Matt were married, both their passports have been flagged and when they visit, they are always detained for questioning. Even though she’s done nothing wrong, Heather said during a recent visit, she always feels as if she’s in trouble.

Matt and Heather just want to be together.

And money is the only thing standing in their way. It costs up to $2,000 to apply for legal resident status and complete the required procedures. And right now, neither Matt and Heather, nor their families, have the money. Heather is unemployed and Matt washes windows and cleans gutters. Rent, car payments, food — that’s all they can afford.

Read the full story on Democrat and Chronicle

Congratulations on getting married!

As part of this exciting time-of-life, you are probably also looking for an affordable, simple and quick option for filing your green card application.

Did you know that you do not have to use a lawyer to file the application? Many couples choose to complete the application process by themselves and avoid the huge fees that lawyers charge (which range from $1,000 to $5,000).

Easygration offers you an even better option than paying these fees or spending lots of time learning all the legal jargon and studying the different forms. Since we are not lawyers, but experts on green card through marriage, we do not charge hefty legal fees, and since we review every case and only take green card cases that do not require a lawyer, you can feel rest assured that you are in good hands.

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✓Detailed instructions on how to file the green card application.

Contact Easygration for your green card through marriage application.

Note: Easygration is not a law firm.

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According to court documents, immigration agents placed the couple’s Blacklick house under surveillance, interviewed their next-door neighbors and sorted through trash bags taken from their curbside refuse container.

The agents collected enough evidence to establish that Kwadwo Asante and Lilian Asante were living as husband and wife but had entered sham marriages with others in hopes of gaining permanent residency in the United States.

Both pleaded guilty and were sentenced yesterday to two years on probation. An immigration judge is expected to deport them.

The tactics used by agents in the case aren’t typical, said a Columbus immigration lawyer, but they illustrate the extremes to which officials will go to investigate the validity of marriages between citizen and noncitizens.

“The truth is, if the government suspects that a marriage isn’t bona fide, they’ll investigate mightily,” said Kenneth J. Robinson.

Federal law is clear: Any individual who “knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading any immigration law” faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The notion that marriage to a citizen is a simple path to a green card visa granting permanent residency is a common misconception, said Dennis Muchnicki, a Dublin-based immigration lawyer. “People think the process is easy, but it’s no walk in the park,” he said.

The couple must file forms with immigration officials asking the government to formally recognize the relationship and grant the noncitizen permanent residency.

The process can take five to seven months, requires exhaustive documentation and includes an interview with an immigration official who separates the couple and asks personal questions, such as where they put their dirty clothes and which side of the bed each sleeps on.

The filing fees for a green card visa cost $1,365. Couples who hire a lawyer to assist them with the process can expect to pay an additional $1,000 to $2,000, Robinson said.

The process isn’t open to all noncitizens. Those who scramble across the border without passing through inspection checkpoints aren’t eligible to gain residency through marriage.

Those who enter the U.S. through customs with fraudulent documents can seek residency through marriage, but the bureaucratic hurdles are significant.

“The majority of those who gain residency benefits through marriage entered the country lawfully,” Robinson said.

Most often, they came to the United States with temporary work or student visas. That was the path taken by the Asantes. Lilian Asante came to attend law school at Ohio State University. Kwadwo Asante was attending Case Western Reserve University’s MBA program.

“When people come here legally from the proverbial Third World countries with a student visa and realize everything this country has to offer, a lot of them don’t want to go back,” said Daniel A. Brown, an assistant U.S. attorney in Columbus.

And some are willing to pay to find a fraudulent spouse, he said.

In December, 11 central Ohio residents were indicted for their involvement in sham marriages arranged for about $17,000 each. Federal prosecutors determined that none of the couples lived together after they were married.

Brown said sham-marriage prosecutions are rare in central Ohio, but he suspects that many escape the scrutiny of investigators.

When couples approach Robinson about helping them with the green card visa process, he puts them through the same kind of questioning they’ll get from an immigration official.

“For every 10 I take, I probably turn away two,” he said.

But he assumes that most find another lawyer willing to help them. “I don’t envy the government’s job.”

Source: The Columbus Dispatch

“With over 15 million Americans unemployed and seven million illegals employed, amnesty legislation is an affront to American citizens and legal residents,” said Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea.

The legislation would legalize undocumented immigrants by requiring them to register with the federal government, pay a $500 fine, learn English, pass background checks and meet other requirements. They then are eligible for a six-year visa and then a green card visa.

Source: Whittier Daily News

A: Immigrants filing applications to renew permanent resident cards, commonly known as “green cards,” need to file Form I-90 (which can be downloaded at www.uscis.gov) with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The form can be mailed or sent by courier to the addresses shown in the instructions. The submission also can be made on line; go to www.uscis.gov and follow the instructions for online filing of Form I-90.

Currently (as of November 2009) an application fee of $290 and a biometrics processing fee of $80 must be submitted with the application. Applicants filing paper forms should obtain money orders for the $370 total, made out to “U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” Applicants filing on line will pay the fees electronically.

All applicants will receive by mail a notice for a biometrics (fingerprint) processing appointment at a local USCIS Application Support Center and will submit any required initial evidence and documentation during that appointment.

IMPORTANT: Applicants are being instructed to take to their biometrics appointments the records of any arrests, convictions, or any other involvement in criminal matters since last being granted legal permanent resident status. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have been attending these appointments and reviewing the documentation supplied by applicants. Some applicants have been detained because of the criminal records they submitted or because their names appeared as a result of an ICE investigation as having outstanding criminal warrants. Accordingly, it is IMPERATIVE that you obtain legal advice before filing your Form I-90 if you have ANY issues involving past or pending criminal proceedings anywhere in the world.

IIC can help you with the I-90 renewal filing process, as well as the application for getting a new green card visa when the original has been lost, or when the card issued contains incorrect information.

NOTE: Holders of two-year conditional permanent resident cards based on marriage to a US citizen don’t file Form I-90 to remove the condition; they use Form I-751 instead.

By the way, anyone who has been a legal permanent resident long enough to be eligible for US citizenship really ought to consider applying for naturalization as soon as possible. IIC can help you with the all aspects of the naturalization application process.

For a free, confidential consultation on this or any other aspect of immigration law, visit one of our legal clinics advertised in The Emigrant.

[Source: Irish Imigrant]

Looking ahead to next year, it has become increasingly important that concerns about the economy not deter lawmakers from ensuring that reforms to attract and retain highly educated, highly skilled foreign nationals are included in comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Illegal immigration issues have dominated the debate, but the reality is that without addressing our broken legal immigration system, we will short-change ourselves in the long run. Keeping the United States a welcoming place for talented students and workers from around the world will be crucial to our economic recovery and our future ability to innovate, compete, and thrive in the global economy.

In an economic downturn, the temptation to lower the blinds and close the doors is strong. But in an age when work can be sent to other countries with the click of a mouse such an approach simply will not work. Many studies, and the experience of countless U.S. companies, have shown that hiring talented foreign workers boosts innovation and drives job creation. It also supports local economies. Foreign-born professionals buy cars and houses and pay tuition for their kids. At our universities, they teach our students, helping us develop our own talent pool for the jobs of tomorrow, and they collaborate with our faculty in the sciences, medicine, and other important fields. Turning away people with the skills our country needs denies us a much-needed resource to support our economic recovery. No country can be an island in the global economy – not even one as large as the United States.

Talented people from other countries often first come to the United States as foreign students. By the time they graduate from our colleges and universities, they have spent years investing in acquiring the best education in the world, generally in fields like engineering and the sciences, where they make up half to two-thirds of the graduate students. Some of these foreign graduates want to contribute their skills and knowledge in the United States, but increasingly they are going home or to other countries instead because our immigration system makes it too difficult for them to stay – even though it is in our interest to help them do so.

To keep them, and to attract other highly educated workers from other countries that U.S. employers need to fill key positions, we must do two things. First, the enormous backlogs and wait times that plague the green card system must be addressed, and there must be a better path to green card visa status for those foreign graduates of our colleges and universities who wish to stay in the United States and whose talent and skills are important to our economy. Exempting from employment-based green card visa quotas foreign students who receive a U.S. master’s degree or higher; eliminating the per-country limits that impede, in particular, Indian and Chinese professionals; and providing additional employment visas for backlog relief would constitute major steps in addressing this problem.

Second, we must maintain and improve the H-1B temporary visa system, the primary way for skilled foreign nationals to pursue employment in the United States. Today, H-1B visas serve as a way station for those who really seek immigrant status but are stuck in the long green card visa line for 6 to 12 years. Fixing the green card visa system will take pressure off the H-1B system, but we will still need a system that can accommodate temporary, high-skill workers. At the same time, where abuses exist with H-1B visas they must be addressed. We must realize it does not make sense in a global competition for highly educated and talented workers to turn away these individuals, many of whom will go to work for companies in other countries that directly compete with our own.

Any effort to address the question of what kind of immigration system the United States needs must begin with an understanding that the mobility of individuals and ideas across borders has profoundly changed. People today possess myriad options for study, employment, and life in countries across the globe. Many nations are aggressively recruiting high-skilled foreign professionals and students, adjusting immigration and work laws to create incentives for them. People, like technology and information, are crossing borders with unprecedented freedom and flexibility. Our immigration laws and visa policy must catch up to these new realities, and must support a climate that encourages the contributions of foreign talent. In the global economy, our future depends on it.

About The Author
Marlene M. Johnson is executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators in Washington, D.C.

Stuart Anderson Executive Director of the National Foundation for American Policy, served as Executive Associate Commissioner for Policy and Planning and Counselor to the Commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service from August 2001 to January 2003.

A bill signed into law last week by US President Barack Obama will allow wealthy Irish people to get green cards to live in the United States in second homes provided they invest in projects that will provide 10 jobs in a high unemployment area.

The little-known programme, known as EB-5 regional centre programme, is a highly beneficial permanent residence option for the wealthy individual, according to Ron Klasko, who is chairman of the EB-5 committee of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association.

The programme requires an investment of at least $500,000 (€336,000) in a high unemployment or rural area in a commercial enterprise that will employ 10 full-time US workers. The investor has to be able to document that the funds are legal, but does not have to be involved in day-to-day management.

Under the law, the permanent home obtained by the Irish investor is conditional for two years and can be made permanent upon satisfying the US Customs and Immigration Service at the end of the two years that the investment proceeds have not been withdrawn, and that the jobs have been created.

“What are the chances of a wealthy Irish national being able to spend his retirement years in the US? Surprisingly the chances may be very good using a vehicle entitled Regional Centre EB-5,” Mr Klasko’s website says.

“Although many people, especially from Asia, have found the $500,000 price tag to be a small price to pay for the US green card visa, for the ability to retire in the US and for the ability to have their children educated in the US, the programme has received a lot less publicity in Ireland.”

His company, Klasko, Rulon, Stock and Seltzer, with offices in New York and Philadelphia specialising in immigration law, said the visa programme allows the Irish retiree to work or not work as he pleases, to live anywhere he wants to in the US, to travel in and out of the country as frequently as he wishes, and to get green card visa for his spouse and unmarried children under the age of 21.

He must invest a specified amount of money, $500,000 to $1m, in a US government-approved regional centre and the investment must be for a period of at least five years.

Read the full story at Independent

Of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States (70 percent from Mexico), 2.7 million are children. These young people benefit from the U.S. school system, but only up through high school. Their education often stops there due to a 1996 federal law that prohibits states from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants unless the state also offers in-state tuition rates to all U.S. citizens.

The DREAM Act is a massive amnesty program for the millions of illegal immigrants (age 12 to 35) who entered the United States before they are 16. Those who apply for this amnesty can receive conditional, temporary resident status, which can be converted, once earned, to a nonconditional green card visa (permanent U.S. residency) after six years. These immigrants can then use their newly acquired status to seek green cards for their parents. In this way, it can also provide amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens who brought their children to the United States.

“I don’t necessarily live in fear of being deported,” says Juan, a high school junior who was born in Mexico. “For the most part, I live a normal life. Except, now everyone is getting their driver’s license, and I can’t.”

Juan came to the U.S. with his mother and older brother in 2000 when he was eight. He is just one of millions of students in the nation hoping for the DREAM Act to be passed. While he does not claim to have experienced any overt prejudice in high school, Juan still faces racial stereotypes.

“It bothers me when people joke around and ask me for my green card,” Juan explains. “I laugh, but deep down I know they are offending me for something I have no control over. I was born in Mexico, but my life is here.”

His older brother, who graduated a few years ago, now attends a community college and plans to transfer to a university. Juan hopes to take a similar path. “I have no doubt that I can go to college,” Juan says. “I know it’s going to be hard, but as long as I stay in this country, I have a chance.”

The DREAM Act was reintroduced in both chambers of Congress last March by Senators Dick Durbin and Richard Lugar.

“I can only hope that the DREAM Act will pass,” Juan says. “All I want is a good life and a promising future, just like everyone else.”

[source: Teen Ink]