News Update - December 31, 2007

By Alan Lee, Esq.

Year End Message

Dear friends,

As the end of the year comes into view, I guess that we along with many others in the nation will look upon the year as fairly uneven with ups and downs but no tremendous disasters like Katrina, Oklahoma City, or the World Trade towers. For this, we can feel blessed. The subprime mortgage problem is lurking and may yet become full-blown in the next year, but has yet to panic Americans in 2007 judging from current spending patterns. Climate change may yet yield "The Day after Tomorrow", but the President is ducking in 2007. Closer to home and our occupation, the immigration issue was up and then it was down. The promise of comprehensive immigration reform in the first half of the year turned sour and we have seen a string of bad news for immigrants in the past six months. No one expects significant reform to happen until the next President is elected. The current crop of Republican candidates is going all-out to out anti-immigrant each other. The Democrats are tiptoeing around the issue.

As I witness the death of the pro immigrant movement by the Republican Party, I am left wondering - where is the Grand Old Party that used to embrace hard working immigrants, whether legal or illegal? Where is the party of Ronald Reagan who signed the Legalization Act of 1986? Where is the party of George Bush, Sr., who allowed Chinese nationals (even overstays) who came to the U.S. by April 1990, to stay in the U.S. permanently. That party is now gone, subsumed by the weight of anti-immigration forces, and sustained by demagogues like Lou Dobbs on TV and Rush Limbaugh on radio. What will be the end result in 2008, an election year? Everyone must wait and see whether those who have been despised and have the right to vote will rise up in force on election day. That day will tell much about the direction of this country. So we welcome 2008 as a year of decision!

 


The author is a 26+ 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 © 2007 Alan Lee, Esq.

 

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