Austin Immigration Lawyer Blog

The Trump Administration is presently looking into adopting a new policy aimed at simplifying the process of denying visa applications on “public charge” grounds. The administration has been gearing up for the change as early as last year. When President Trump made his first attempt at implementing an immigration ban on predominantly Muslim countries in January last year, a supplementary executive order was reportedly already in the works.

While this executive order was never signed or formally released, it was intended to follow through on the President’s immigration platform grounded on the idea that “households headed by aliens (legal and illegal) are much more likely than households headed by native-born citizens to use federal means-tested public benefits.”

The policy has drawn heavy criticism from New York legislators, with more than 70 of them led by Assemblyman Andrew D. Hevesi, collectively publishing an open letter addressed to President Trump where they expressed their opposition to the draft proposal.

The State Department recently announced that it had affirmed the termination of a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) between Ecuador and the United States, set to take effect a year after the Ecuadorian government issued a notice of its termination. The termination of the BIT, however, also affects the availability of  E-2 treaty investor visas for Ecuadorian immigrant workers.

The E-2 investor visa allows certain individuals from countries the United States has a commerce and navigation treaty (such as the BIT) with to enter the country. In particular, only foreign nationals who have invested a “substantial amount of capital” in a U.S. business enterprise may avail of the visa as they are expected to develop and direct the operations of that enterprise throughout their stay in the country.

What happens after the termination of a BIT is unique to every treaty because each agreement follows an embedded set of post-termination guidelines. In the case of the U.S.-Ecuador BIT, Ecuadorian nationals with E-2 visas acquired on or before May 18, 2018 will remain entitled to their E-2 classification until May 18, 2028.

California’s Fair Employment and Housing Commission (FEHC) recently published the complete text of its “Regulations Regarding National Origin Discrimination,” clarifying how the term “national origin” is defined for purposes of implementing the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). In particular, the new regulations prohibit employers from inquiring into a job seeker or employee’s immigration status. An exception has been made, however, for instances where “the person seeking discovery or making the inquiry has shown by clear and convincing evidence that such inquiry is necessary to comply with federal immigration law.”

These changes take effect on July 1, 2018.

A “national origin group” is typically defined as a group of people who same the same place of origin, culture, ancestry, or language. The FEHC’s new regulations, however, expand the interpretation of nation origin in implementing the FEHA, adding all conceivable attributes of a national origin group categorized accordingly.

Officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety apprehended dozens of undocumented immigrants packed in a truck trailer Tuesday night in South Texas, nearly 50 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The officers counted 86 people, ranging from as young as 3-years old to 59; four were minors who crossed the border without guardians.

The immigrants were found in the refrigerated trailer of an 18-wheeler truck “packed like sardines,” as described by Frank Torres, emergency medical services manager for Willacy County.

Police began tailing the truck when it passed Donna, a border town a few miles north of the Rio Grande, after receiving a call that it likely contained undocumented immigrants and eventually made their move on the highway.

As expected, Sec. Kirstjen M. Nielsen of the Department of Homeland Security announced this month that the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) granted to Honduran immigrants would finally end by January 5, 2020.

After Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America in 1998, killing an estimated 10,000 people in Honduras alone, the United States government decided to open its doors to Honduran refugees, granting more than 57,000 Hondurans a designation known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Congress created the Temporary Protected Status designation in 1990 into an effort to aid people from countries afflicted by civil turmoil or severe destruction caused by natural disasters like Hurricane Mitch. In turn, the TPS designation has protected Honduran nationals, as well as Nicaraguans, in the country from deportation for decades.