News Update - October 4, 2008

By Alan Lee, Esq.^†‡

Visa Efficiency and E-Verify Extension Act of 2008 News

In our article, "October Visa Numbers Open with a Thud: Action Needed Now to Pass the 'Visa Efficiency and E-Verify Extension Act of 2008' ", we championed the legislation which would recapture both employment and family based visa numbers from 1992-2007 that were authorized but never used. The New York Times has taken up the cause in its October 3, 2008, opinion, "Legal Immigration? Anybody?" to question the sincerity of congressional anti-immigration hard-liners who piously say that they love the immigrants and rage against illegal immigrants, yet when given the chance to help legal immigrants in a long overdue redress of past failures to correctly distribute visas, are "strangely uninterested" in helping people who play by the rules and wait in line. The Times points out that a companion House bill by Representative Zoe Lofgren of California could recapture an estimated 550,000 lost visas, and compares the thousands of potential green cards vanishing every year to unused cellphone minutes. The Times reiterates the views of many including this author that recapturing visas is a modest fix that should have been made a long time ago.

† 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 © 2008 Alan Lee, Esq.

Copyright © 2003-2012 Alan Lee, Esq.
The information provided here is of a general nature and may not apply to any particular set of facts or circumstances. It should not be construed as legal advice and does not constitute an engagement of the Law Office of Alan Lee or establish an attorney-client relationship.