Matter of Thakker, 28 I&N Dec. 843 (BIA 2024) (1) The assumption in Matter of Jurado that a retail theft offense involves an intent to permanently deprive a victim of their property is inconsistent...
USCIS, Sept. 19, 2024 "We have received enough petitions to reach the congressionally mandated cap on H-2B visas for temporary nonagricultural workers for the first half of fiscal year 2025. Sept...
Lopez Orellana v. Garland "The question presented here is whether the Louisiana accessory-after-the-fact statute, LA.REV. STAT. § 14:25, is a categorical match for the generic federal offense...
USCIS, Sept. 18, 2024 "Effective Sept. 10, 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services automatically extended the validity of Permanent Resident Cards (also known as Green Cards) to 36 months...
Singh v. Garland "Petitioner Varinder Singh, a native and citizen of India, seeks rescission of a removal order entered in absentia. We previously granted Singh’s petition because the government...
[Xie v. Kerry, 21 F. Supp. 3d 89 (D.D.C. 2014) reversed.]
"The D.C. Circuit axed a win for the U.S. Department of State on Monday in a suit accusing it of illegally slowing down reviews of certain Chinese individuals' visa applications, saying the plaintiff deserved to have her claim examined and that the case record was a “black box” on how immigrant queue lengths are determined.
In a victory for plaintiff Meina Xie, the three-judge D.C. Circuit panel reversed the dismissal of her case, which deals with the cut-off dates for Chinese applicants of an EB-3 visa subcategory, known as “EWs.” These employment-based visas are intended for workers in jobs that require less than two years of training and for which there aren’t enough U.S. workers.
Xie, a Chinese native with an approved EW petition, has allegedly been waiting in the State Department’s immigration queue for over eight years. She launched her suit against Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013 over claims that the department is intentionally delaying the EW cut-off date for Chinese petitioners." - Allissa Wickham, Law360, Mar. 10, 2015.
"As to the determinants of the length of immigrant queues, the record provides little more than a black box. ... the parties haven’t furnished any relevant regulations which would reveal State’s view of how it meshes the categorical caps, the priority rule, and the other statutory directives, much less the thinking behind that view, and we have found none that do so." - Xie v. Kerry, Mar. 10, 2015. [Hats off to Christopher A. Teras!]