News Update - January 24, 2009

By Alan Lee, Esq.^†‡

New Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Sworn In

Janet Napolitano, the former Governor of the State of Arizona, was sworn in on January 21, 2009 as the Obama Administration’s Secretary of The Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Napolitano will serve as the Department’s third secretary since its inception in 2003. The DHS controls the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Customs and Border Protection.

Napolitano has extensive experience in immigration and homeland security. While serving as Arizona’s Attorney General, she assisted in writing the law which breaks up human smuggling rings. In 2005, as Governor of Arizona, Napolitano declared a state of emergency in order to direct more state funds towards border enforcement. She also used National Guard troops at the Arizona-Mexico border in 2006 to halt illegal immigration. Napolitano was a proponent of the June 2007 comprehensive immigration reform bill and urged its passage.

Prior to Congress’s approval of Napolitano as the new Secretary of the DHS, she answered in a policy questionnaire that she would consider “a broad range of changes” to Bush immigration policies. Napolitano does not support the erection of a physical border fence, but has been critical of the DHS’s delay in establishing a virtual fence. She hopes to rein in provisions of REAL ID dealing with the driver’s license requirements created to improve the security of identification documents, and has labeled such an unfunded federal mandate. Napolitano supports a temporary worker program with no amnesty and employer sanctions directed towards employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. She has been critical of some of the USICE raids that have happened in Arizona. She also supports a pathway to citizenship that includes a large fine, learning English, holding a job and paying taxes, having no criminal history, and going to the end of the waiting list.

† 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 © 2009 Alan Lee, Esq.

Copyright © 2003-2012 Alan Lee, Esq.
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