California Dream approved for undocumented immigrants

This month, California Jerry Brown signed into a law a bill, known as the California Dream Act, that would allow undocumented (illegal) immigrants in California to receive private funds to go to college, if they would otherwise qualify. As I have said many times over in this blog and elsewhere, this is a part of the solution. The entire text of the California Dream Act can be found on the American immigration Lawyers Association website here.

Avoid Green Card Lottery Fraud

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, the annual Green Card Lottery is redrawing winners starting from July 15, 2011 in order to fix the computer glitch that corrupted the last results of the draw. Along with this news comes the usual warnings to avoid the many scammers who try to defraud people by sending emails that look like they are official emails from the Department of State and asking the "winners" to wire them money or other vital information.

One easy way to tell they are a fraud is that the e-mail address does not end with a “.gov”.

One particularly common fraud email comes from an address ending in @diplomats.com or @usa.com and asks potential victims to wire $819 per applicant/family member via Western Union to an individual (the name varies) at the following address in the United Kingdom: 24 Grosvenor Square, London W1A 1AE. If you receive this email, do NOT respond. Report it immediately to the Internet Crime Complaint Center and the Federal Trade Commission online or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).

You can access more information about these types of fraudulent activities on the Beacon, the USCIS official blog here and also on the Department of State's official website here.

Green Card Lottery draw rescheduled for this Friday July 15, 2011

The annual U.S. Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, popularly known as the Green Card Lottery, makes available up to 55,000 diversity visas annually, drawn from random selection among applicants who come from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. This program is very important because the very basic requirements (high school diploma or work equivalent, plus being a native of one of the eligible counties, the lack of a filing fee, and the simple application process of submitting the application form and photographs electronically through the US Department of State website) opens the doors to many who otherwise would have no way to lawfully immigrate to the U.S.

Each year, there is a registration period that usually lasts 1-2 months, in the fall, during which you can submit your application (registration phase) and after a random computer generated selection, the lucky few can check the US Department of State website for news of their selection in the following spring/summer, and invited to complete the visa process at the local US Consulate or take the required steps to adjust their status if they are already in the United States.

For the most recent 2012 lottery however, a computer glitch caused the selection of winners not to be random at all. After review, it was discovered that 90% of winners were selected among applicants who had filed their application on the first two days of registration (Octoebr 5 and 6, 2010). This caused the U.S. Department of State the embarassment of having to notify all those "winners" that in fact their selection had to be voided (and their hopes crushed). A new draw has been scheduled and so, for those of you who applied for the 2012 lottery on any day of the registration period between October 5, 2010 and November 3, 2010, it will be included in the new selection lottery. Your confirmation number to check results on the U.S. Department of State website is still valid.

So check the status of your application through the DOS website between July 15, 2011 (this Friday) until June 30, 2012. More information can be found on the official Diversity Visa Lottery website here.

Good luck!!!

New 9th Circuit case on fraud and removability

The Ninth Circuit has today filed a new opinion in the case of Planes v. Holder, holding that a conviction under California Penal Code section 476a(a)(passing a bad check with intent to defraud) is categorically a Crime Involving Moral Turpitude (CIMT) rendering an alien removable (deportable) from the United States. That is, it is sufficient for the Department of Homeland Security to merely submit evidence of a conviction, without going to the trouble of adding conviction records that could provide a context for the offense, in order to prove their case against the alien.

This was an interesting read for me because I have been arguing in a current case before the Immigration Court that my client's conviction under a similar fraud statute, albeit this one is for forgery under section 470(a), is not categorically a CIMT. Neither counsel for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nor I could find a case exactly on point, although I tried to argue that the Ninth Circuit has already found forgery not to categorically be a CIMT in Vizcarra-Ayala v. Mukasey, 514 F.3d 870, 872 (9th Cir. 2008), a case involving a conviction for possession of a forged document under California Penal Code 475(c). In Vizcarra-Ayala, the Ninth Circuit looked at criminal court cases in California that involved section 475(c) and found one case where it was used to successfully prosecute a woman who tried to cash a fictitious check in the sincere belief that it was intended for her. Because of that sincere belief, the woman, though in possession of a forged document, could not by any conceivable means be considered to have acted in a manner “inherently base, vile, or depraved”, which is one of the murky definitions of a CIMT. Foolish, yes. A CIMT, no. As such, the Ninth Circuit found that Mr. Vizcarra-Ayala could not be found removable by virtue of a conviction under section 475(c) alone. Crucial in its conclusion was the fact that the Department of Homeland Security had not provided any conviction documents for Mr. Vizcarra-Ayala save for a bare abstract of judgment and as such, the Department had failed to provide any “indication of the context surrounding [the] offense” that could shed light on whether the respondent’s conduct could be qualified as inherently base, vile, or depraved. The Judge's decision in my client's case is still pendng at this point.

In today's opinion, Planes v. Holder, the Ninth Circuit, in a very short paragraph of a fourteen page decision, dismissed Mr. Planes' argument that his conviction for passing a bad check was not categorically a CIMT. The Ninth Circuit made a sweeping statement that all fraud crimes are categorically crimes involving moral turpitude, simply by virtue of their fraudulent nature, adding that this is a “clearly established rule” that has existed “since at least 1951”. Accordingly, none of the arguments advanced by Mr. Planes could disturb the "longstanding rule that crimes that have fraud as an element... are categorically crimes involving moral turpitude." This is so perplexing to me because, as I mentioned above, in the case of Vizcarra-Ayala, whose forgery conviction was under a section that also had fraud as an element, the Ninth Circuit found the opposite. So, in my humble opinion, there could be a contradiction here between precedents.

The full text of the opinion can be found here.