News Update - June 1, 2010New Green Cards Are Green; And Planned Holtsville, New York, Field Office Inconvenient To Travel.As new green card holders may have noticed, the new green cards are indeed green. U.S.C.I.S. has begun to issue the new cards on May 11, 2010 with more security features. More details are available through this link. As part of its efforts to close the Garden City, Long Island, field office of U.S.C.I.S., the New York District will open a new office in Holtsville, Long Island, to which travel will become much more inconvenient to many. It has not yet been determined what will be the jurisdiction of the Holtsville office - whether it will entertain cases in Long Island alone or if it will also take over some or most of the cases in Queens and Brooklyn as is the case today with Garden City. One of the most pressing questions is how people who do not drive (which is the case with many people in New York City and its suburbs) and do not live in Long Island will be able to arrive to their appointments on time. The estimated time from Penn Station in New York to the nearest station to Holtsville, Ronkonkoma Station, on the Long Island Railroad and ensuing cab ride is approximately 1 hour 45 minutes; there are no trains in the morning between 6:38 a.m. to 8:58 a.m. and only one per hour thereafter; and the return trains are only 1 per hour from 8:30am to 4:00pm. The cost of a cab ride from the city to Holtsville would be at least $100 and more. Hopefully Holtsville's jurisdiction will be limited to residents of Long Island. † The author is a 30+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. ‡ This article © 2010 Alan Lee, Esq.
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