News Update - April 4, 2011

By Alan Lee, Esq.^†‡

Naturalizations in Hartford

In the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) /Hartford, CT., CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) liaison meeting of November 30, 2010, interesting naturalization (N-400) topics were discussed which can come up in adjudications anywhere. 

On N-400 adjudications, Hartford CIS looks at the admission and adjustment issues in the context of the N-400 adjudication, e.g. those who enter as immigrants or adjust status to permanent residence as unmarried sons/daughters and at the time of naturalization, admit that they were married at the time of entry.  On employment based cases and attorneys complaining that there was lengthy questioning concerning employment histories despite AC-21 portability, Hartford CIS said that naturalization officers understand portability, but what will trigger more detailed inquiry is where the employment history on the N-400 is inconsistent with the employment listed on the I-485 application for adjustment of status to permanent residence or where the applicants never worked for the sponsoring employer or in the field through which they obtained adjustment of status subsequent to the I-485 approval. (Under AC-21 portability, an employment based applicant who has an approved I-140 immigrant petition for alien worker and has had an I-485 pending for 180 days is allowed to "port" his or her case to another employer so long as the employment will be in the same or a similar occupation). 

N-400 officers were also complained against as requesting tax information and incorporation documents for an applicant who was the sole member of a limited liability corporation or other legal entity; asking for copies of mortgage applications from people doing I-485 or N-400 interviews; and for encouraging U.S. citizen spouses to be present for N-400 interviews in which permanent residence was previously granted based on a marriage. 

† 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 © 2011 Alan Lee, Esq.

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