Immigration Law

well welcome and we're here to talk about let me introduce our speaker Celina ritziest nigosh is an attorney and serves as a program director of the immigrant Law Center of Minnesota she's a 2003 graduate of Hamlin University School of Law she has practiced immigration law exclusively during her legal career prior to joining the immigrant Law Center Celina worked for several years at a nonprofit law office central ygal where she supervised the immigration law unit and also practiced at the Minneapolis firm of the Wilson Law Group she has significant experience in working to achieve immigration status for victims of domestic violence and other violent crime and as well and representing individuals that are facing removal from the United States in her current role at the immigrant Law Center she provides legal supervision outreach and education regarding a variety of immigration issues Celina is one of the authorities in the state of Minnesota as it relates to immigration help me welcome Celina thank you very much for the welcome and I do appreciate the opportunity to be here to talk about immigration law with you all today I would note that there are a lot of authorities in the state of Minnesota we actually have a pretty good bar of attorneys locally who specialize in immigration law not to say that there aren't a few that maybe aren't so much authorities but I am pleased to be here to be able to talk to you about immigration I think it's a really interesting topic not just because I practice immigration law but I think it's becoming more and more relevant for everyone in our professional lives and the work that we do I'm sure in the work that all of you do you see it come up in various ways in the work that you do I think many of us know immigrants we have we come from immigrant families or were married to immigrants or what have you so immigration law I think at a certain point will intersect with your life and it's good to have a little bit of background information I will say that today's training is pretty heavy-duty in the sense that it's a lot of information in a short time I feel like it can be a little bit overwhelming but it's really not for you to walk away feeling like you have a complete grasp on the law it's really more to sort of give you an introduction to two ways that people can get their legal status how limited the forms for getting your legal status are and then also to just help you maybe identify when someone's calling in that this may be a situation where immigration law is implicated and this may be a person who warrants a referral to an immigration agency so I welcome you to ask questions at any time don't have to wait until the end just interrupt if there's something not clear as we go along because again it can be quite detailed my clickers working today I'm happy about that it wasn't yesterday so just a little bit about the organization that I work at immigrant law center of Minnesota is we're located in st. Paul we're a non-profit law office we serve the entire state so we have clients across the state we have our main office in st. Paul we have a satellite office at the Neighborhood House also in st. Paul where our current speaking legal assistant works and then we also have a satellite office in Worthington Minnesota to serve the southwestern population there we do direct legal representation to low income immigrants we use one hundred and eighty seven point five percent of the federal poverty guidelines as our income level for case acceptance because you know the work that we do we get funding and from charitable donations so we really focus on the most low-income clients in addition to providing direct representation we do community education and outreach as well as advocacy on immigration issues at the state and federal level so right now our executive director is he's everywhere talking about the possibility of comprehensive immigration reform which were really excited about and hope will happen to start out with with immigration law I think just a very basic point to make is that immigration law is all about non-citizens you know there are citizens of the United States people who are born here or who become citizens and they really won't be subject to the immigration law unless they want to file for a family member or something like that otherwise immigration law is all about sort of controlling who is here who is not already a citizen just to define who is a citizen to begin citizens of course can be a citizen by birth born in the USA you know if you're born here our laws and our Constitution say that you will be a citizen by birth you can also be a citizen if your parents are citizens and you happen to be born abroad young people under the age of 18 who are lawful permanent residents can get their citizenship automatically if their parent becomes a citizen before they turn 18 and then there there's also a voluntary process of actually applying for citizenship called naturalization where you fill out an application and you show that you're a fit candidate to be a citizen of the United States non-citizens can really run the gamut you can have people who are here undocumented people who may be entered with a visa but are now out of status because they overstayed their visa they can have they can be undocumented because they cross the border without inspection or without presenting any visa basically they cross the border illegally then there are non immigrants those are people who come intending just to visit maybe with a student visa or a visitor visa and that's a temporary status that ends at a certain point and then that they're supposed to return home after that and then of course there are immigrants and an immigrant really is defined by someone who intends to remain in the United States and make their life here and we know them usually as lawful permanent residents or people who have a green card so I'm going to talk about some of the ways that people can get their legal status in the United States there are just myriad little bits of the law that I will go into as well but there are three sort of primary categories and the first one is through family and that would be where someone is filing a petition to request that their family member be able to either come to the United States and have lawful status or if that family member is here that that family member can remain in the United States and get their lawful status the second main category is is just generally titled freedom by that we mean people who are fleeing their homeland and seeking freedom in the United States seeking refuge in the United States so that would be refugees or asylees and then there's employment-based immigration and I have to admit right up front that I do not specialize in immigration law or in employment-based immigration law at all it's a totally different animal the clients of immigration law attorneys who practice employment immigration law are you know typically companies who are hiring foreign nationals to come here and work and having worked mainly a non-profit that's just not a clientele that we've ever had so we focus on families and individuals and the law is very fast too so there's a lot to it there's plenty to learn without introducing employment to go into a little bit of detail about refugees and asylees first of all I just was wondering do people have ideas about the refugee groups we have in Minnesota any ideas some of the we have some were like the top state for a couple of different refugee groups anybody have ideas yeah what countries are mmm-hmm we have I think if I'm not missing this either the top or the second highest population of Hmong refugees and then I think we're the number one in the country for Somali refugees we also have a growing population of Korean refugees it's an ethnic minority from Burma and that population is growing more and more in our state as well so Minnesota compared to other states has a pretty sizable population of refugees and a refugee is basically someone who has fled their homeland because of persecution based on their race their religion their membership in a particular social group or yeah race religion national origin social group or their political opinion so we see people who have had to flee their homelands and live in refugee camps and then they come and get resettled in the United States so a refugee is someone who's classified before they come into the United States they're given that permission to enter here abroad before they come here whereas an asylum seeker is someone who comes to the US and then requests the protection of the US so someone who maybe comes on a student visa and then that's the sort of their entry into the country and then they claim the protection of this country because they're being persecuted in their homeland there's a whole bunch of sort of special provisions that I'm going to get into later in the presentation that I think are quite relevant for the work that you do all right I'm guessing it is um for the types of calls that you might get so I'll get into these a little bit later another sort of temporary basis for being here legally is something called temporary protected status and I don't know if people have heard of people who have TPS but TPS is basically a temporary status for people who of certain countries who are here and they may have come in illegally even but the government is now saying we're not going to force you to return to your homeland because your homeland really isn't prepared to receive you back right now maybe there's been a natural disaster a hurricane or earthquake that's ruined the infrastructure of the country or maybe there's civil strife going on in the country really isn't prepared to receive its Nationals back these are the countries that are currently designated for temporary protected status the main clients that we see at our office our Nationals of El Salvador and Honduras and they're able to get a work permit and work lawfully for a period of usually a one and a half years and then they renew that status so there are quite a few people from these countries who have this status Celina how often do they update those countries it just depends on what's going on you know there was like an eruption of a volcano in Guatemala like a year and a half ago and it was really terrible like I think people got killed and it ruined villages and stuff like that and we were really hoping that the the government would designate Guatemala as a TPS country and it didn't so it just depends on what's going on in the countries I think every year they evaluate and see you know is this country ready to is it in a position to take its Nationals back Liberia is an example of that Liberia had TPS for many years and then at a certain point I think it was under the Bush administration they ended it because they deemed that the country was no longer undergoing the civil strife that made it hard to go back there however the government has now given Liberian something called deferred and forced departure basically you no longer have TPS but we're still not going to deport you and we're still going to give you a work permit so it really depends on the conditions on the ground in those countries Thanks and like Syria is a new addition because of what's happening there all right family family is a major basis for immigration does anybody know anyone who I don't know married someone from another country and is going through the immigration process or heard about that not too uncommon right and have you heard about how challenging it's been for them yes it really is I mean depending on the situation it can be very challenging for people even if they're married to a u.s. citizen to get their status in this country so who do people think who do all think can file a petition on behalf of family members like what do you have to be so the person you apply for has to be an it has to be an immediate family member right and even to file a petition you yourself have to at least be as soon as a permanent resident or a citizen so the law really only recognizes this family reunification if you already have the requisite legal status to be living in this country seems logical I guess so US citizens and permanent residents can file for certain family members and citizens not surprisingly have more advantages under the law than permanent residents do a citizen can petition for a longer list of individuals as you can see here they can petition for a spouse parent an unmarried child as well as a married child and siblings as well whereas permanent residents can't file for their parents or their siblings and if they file for their children their children have to be single so citizens really have a lot more rights under the law and the process is also quicker for their relatives so if a US citizen wants to file for his or her spouse after they file that petition to show they have a bona fide marriage then that spouse can apply for their permanent residence right away they don't have to wait once that petition is approved whereas a permanent resident who files a petition for his spouse that spouse is going to be waiting between three and six years before she's going to be able to even apply for her visa to come into the country we're hoping that's going to change if there's any comprehensive immigration reform because it's we see families separated just for too long and then the just everything else varies a sibling of a US citizen right now is you know if you're from Mexico and you file a petition for your sibling that sibling has at least a 15 year waiting period before they can apply to enter the country legally so these are the backlogs that they talk about when they're talking about immigration reform and why people need to go to the back of the line this is the line it's basically there's something called the Visa Bulletin that controls who can apply and when based on when their first petition was filed it all gets pretty technical yeah do they no longer have the visas where if you're engaged for someone from another country you have to get coming to this country but you had to be married is it a certain amount of months after entering you know I don't think we have that in our PowerPoint so thank you yeah that's a fiance visa yep that still exists so yeah that's another way is you don't necessarily have to be married if you're a US citizen you can file for a fiance abroad bring them over get married and then they file for their residence so that's another way yeah another advantage that we should actually add to our list of the people that citizens can apply for fiance's mm-hmm so after after you filed the petition as I was explaining there needs to actually be a visa available for that person and people will wait in some instance as many years for their time to come and it's no wonder that many people end up just crossing the border illegally if they're from a country where it's easier to do that because it's just hard to be separated that long and where you apply for your visa will depend on some factors if you're living abroad then you will go to the US Embassy or consulate in your home country and design yourself to be interviewed to get your visa there if you're living in the United States and you qualify to apply here then you would go to your immigration interview just I don't know four blocks from here at the immigration offices over on Metro Boulevard so and then there are people who are here in this country but don't qualify to apply directly here with immigration they have to actually go home to their home country because they lived here without authorization so that's what the process can be come difficult because when they leave they become subject to a bar they need to file a waiver to pardon that time they were here illegally and this is why it becomes very challenging for people every time someone thinks while I'm married to a citizen I'm just going to get my green card I want to caution them and say wait you really need to talk this through very thoroughly with an experienced immigration attorney to see how the process is going to go for you because you can really kind of mess up your case and end up being stuck outside the country in some instances if you don't know the proper route to go so we always urge caution there and before people get there permanent residents the government will evaluate them thoroughly to see if they're a good candidate to live in this country so of course they're going to undergo background checks and they're going to have to reveal all of their immigration history if they've come into the country illegally before or ever committed any fraud and if they're if they've done certain things that could be deemed inadmissible or ineligible for their permanent residence and one of the examples that I cite because I still think it's shocking even though this has been a law on the books for fifteen years is that if you falsely claim to be a US citizen you will never be able to legalize your status so even if you're married to a u.s. citizen and you're here and you're trying to support your family and you go when you apply for a job but because you don't have papers you mark that you're a citizen on the i-9 form that can really render you ineligible forever under the current law from getting your residence so the law is very harsh in some instances this is a sample of a work permit this is a document that people get so that they can show that they're authorized to work in the United States this is what someone that for example with TPS would have temporary protected status it just shows you know it has their photo and fingerprint and everything and it's it's an indicator that they're authorized to work in the US this is the new green card permanent resident card and started out being pink I don't know if it was evergreen I don't know why they could Maus must have been green way back in the day I don't know the oldest ones I've seen were pink and then they were white and then now I've got a little band of green up there so now that we've talked about some of the temporary statuses and then lawful permanent residents the next sort of ultimate stage of immigration is naturalization it's really the best form of immigration status you can have and you can only apply for naturalization once you've had your green card for at least five years unless you're married to a u.s. citizen in which case you only need to wait three years and it's a voluntary process people don't have to apply to become a citizen if they don't want to they can continue living in the US with their green card indefinitely until they die if they would like but there are very many advantages to becoming a citizen you can never be deported that's the hugest advantage from my perspective your children who are under 18 and who also have their lawful permanent residents can derive citizenship automatically once you become a citizen as we know you can apply for more family members if you're a citizen you're eligible for more forms of public benefits as a citizen you can travel as long as you want without worrying about coming back into the country because permanent residents can't travel for too long or immigration could think that they've abandoned their status so more than six months out of the country and immigration might really a permanent resident about their intention to remain in the US so four people would like to travel a lot we say you better become a citizen and of course you get to vote if you're a citizen and really participate in the highest form in our Civic process there are some disadvantages or hurdles to becoming a citizen you may lose some rights in your home country but by becoming a citizen in the US maybe you won't be able to hold public office there if you are planning to do that or own property other things like that some people have difficulty establishing good moral character you need to show that for the last five years you haven't had really anything more than just tickets or you know minor infractions under the law one thing that's difficult for a lot of people is that there's a test on English and US history and government so and also the whole interview has to be in English and a lot of people have difficulty with that they may have lived in this country for well more than the requisite five years but they've never really had to learn English because they worked with other immigrants and spoke in their own language or they really didn't leave the home very much so that can be a problem for a lot of applicants there are exceptions that can apply if you have a mental disorder or medical disability that makes you unable to learn English or you know new things like civics so but in those instances you'd need to have a medical certification proving that and the other risk of applying for naturalization is that you're making yourself vulnerable to immigration again you may have been floating along as a permanent resident for many years without immigration paying any attention to you or knowing about you but once you apply for citizenship you're going to be undergoing one last very deep background check before they're going to give you that citizenship so there are people who don't realize that conviction in their past makes them vulnerable to deportation they may not know they may not just think it's a minor thing you know maybe they have a conviction for violating in order for protection that's only a misdemeanor they may not think that's any big deal and yet it's a deportable offense so when we have people applying for citizenship we really screen them really carefully and caution them against taking the whole process too lightly because the worst thing is just going forward not knowing the risks and then suddenly finding yourself in deportation proceedings this is an example of the naturalization certificate it's missing the photo but that's what they look like now to the downside removal or deportation so this would be people who aren't citizens these are going to be the people who have to think about this so removal as you probably know is or deportation is being forcibly expelled from the United States and sent back to your home country and the people that can be deported really are almost everyone who's not a citizen undocumented people obviously someone who was came in legally but now they've overstayed if I sketches up with someone who's overstayed their student visa or stopped going to school they're now subject to removal from the United States and even as we just talked about green card holders legal permanent residents can be deported if they've committed certain offenses or have other violations of the immigration law and you know the law really doesn't care even how long people have lived in the United States immigration judges when they're reviewing someone's deportation case they do not have the discretion the law does not give them any discretion to give a reprieve to someone who has lived here since they were one-year-old and that's very common to have people who have been here almost their whole lives and yet have lived here undocumented their whole life but the law doesn't provide any way just from having been here your whole life to remain here even if you don't know your the language of your home country or there's no one there to receive you now family you can still be deported how's that change that deferred action for childhood arrivals yep I'm going to get into that but that's a great point I mean that's what that's a new form of relief that we've really welcomed because it's helped a lot of people yeah so it's just coming up along in the presentation but great point so this can give you an idea of how relevant deportation has become in the country it's really increased just exponentially in the last decade and we've seen that just on an anecdotal basis locally in our work more and more people in not only more and more people in removal proceedings I mean immigration courts are overwhelmed their dockets are just huge ice the enforcement arm of immigration got lots of funding to go out and apprehend people and initiate removal proceedings but that same level of funding was not given to the courts so they're struggling to keep up with a number of removals and then not only are more and more people getting put into removal proceedings but they're also being detained when they weren't before in the past you know if you are apprehended by ice and found to be undocumented or out of status they would say okay you're in removal proceedings now and I'm going to send you notice of your court hearing and you have to show up because you're in removal proceedings and you're probably going to get deported now they don't give people the option to do that now typically what's done is ice detains that individual and requires a $10,000 bond for that at least that's sort of the starting point nowadays for them to get out of custody and be free while they're trying to fight their deportation case that's really hard for a lot of families as you can imagine because it's not a percentage like it would be in a criminal bond it's the full ten thousand dollars that they have to pay and then there's no right to government appointed counsel in removal proceedings in immigration court like you know there are public defenders in the criminal sphere we don't have that in immigration law so you have a lot of people who don't get help in the materials we've mentioned something called the Minnesota detention project and this may be something that's relevant to tell people who call in our office is one of the partners in this collaboration basically it's a group of some of the nonprofits in town our office and the advocates for human rights as well as law schools local law schools that have immigration clinics where they're teaching students about immigration law through our collaboration we ensure that there is a volunteer attorney there at the first hearing for everyone who's detained and doesn't have a lawyer so anyone who's detained is unrepresented will have the opportunity to talk to a lawyer or to a supervised law student to evaluate their case before they go in and see the judge and see if there's any defense that they're going to have in their case to be able to fight their case in salina if there is a defense then do they work out some kind of representation for that person sometimes if we have the capacity then whoever is has done that intake on that person will try to refer it to one of the offices usually our office immigrant Law Center to see if we can help out that individual and sometimes we have capacity to do that and if not then what we try to do is at least give them a list of private immigration attorneys that we know are experienced and reputable so that they can pursue the relief on their own but it you know if there's a very really vulnerable case where the person is just clearly not going to be able to hire an attorney we try to when we can step in and take on the full representation of that person that first child or good question there's always a Spanish language interpreter in the court and for other languages if they need an interpreter they'll get someone on the language line so so even with the legal consultation oh I see um well most of like all of the staff of our office speak Spanish and that's the main language we see down there but once in a while we'll get another language and if we just are unable to communicate with that person will tell the judge when we go in to the court with them so that they can get someone on the language line in there and then you know it's challenging but most of the time I would say the non-hispanic clients speak enough English to communicate with a volunteer attorney and if the volunteer attorney who's there doesn't speak Spanish than there are they arrange to have a volunteer interpreter come so usually the language needs are accounted for yeah good question some of the forms of relief from against deportation are you know any of anything under the law that the person might otherwise qualify for one of the main ones that's specific to just being in deportation proceedings is something called cancellation of removal and this is something for people who have been in the year in the US for at least ten years so this is one where they take into account your years of residency in the US but on top of just having been here ten years you need to show that you either have a child a spouse or a parent who is either a citizen or a resident and that person is going to suffer exceptional and extremely unusual hardship if you're deported so it's sort of this three tiered requirement to be able to cancel your removal not only at least ten years and good moral character but also that your family member and only your family member with citizenship or permanent residence has some severe health issue or maybe you know very severe depression debilitating depression or something like that only in those instances will that person be able to cancel their removal but the person might also qualify for asylum or maybe they have a family petition that's finally come current under the law and they can apply for their residents that way a couple of times we found people who are automatically citizens and didn't know it and that's just like a dime you know finding a needle in a haystack and you're so happy when you're able to tell ice release this man he's a citizen you know his parents got their citizenship before he turned 18 so even though he's got a removable offense he can't be deported he's a citizen so there are sometimes things we can find sadly there's a lot of times when there's just absolutely nothing absolutely nothing that the person qualifies for and they have to either just request to leave voluntarily by paying for their own ticket but they never get out of custody if they're detained or just accepting a straight-up deportation so it's pretty demoralizing down there at detain court sometimes in deportation can apply equally to children I think sometimes people are shocked to think of a small child being subject to ice wanting to deport them but under the law they are equally susceptible to deportation children who are US citizens again won't necessarily be a painter or prevention from their parent being deported unless the parent has all of those other elements for something like cancellation of removal so sometimes a child will go on the deportation flight with the parent we can arrange for that with ice some parents arrange for their children to remain in the US with family members the government agencies are involved in immigration there are several the Department of Homeland Security is sort of the umbrella agency that was created after 9/11 and under that agency you have US Citizenship and Immigration Services that's the office that receives your application for your green card and interviews you on it that's they have their offices just right over here at Metro Drive US Customs and Border Protection are the officers at the airport when you come into the u.s. that inspect your visa or they're also the Border Patrol there's US Customs and Immigration enforce our immigration and Customs Enforcement ice we think it's a really fitting moniker for them they're also located in the same building as immigration they're in charge of arresting and detaining people processing them for removal and then the immigration courts that's the judges who decide immigration or deportation cases and the Board of Immigration Appeals they fall under the Department of Justice and then there's the Department of State which is in charge of processing visas and also participates in processing refugees from abroad in addition to many other government now I'm going to get into some of the special provisions for vulnerable populations and I think that this I heard yesterday after the talk from one of your colleagues that this was the part that was maybe most helpful or surprising of all of the information and it may be because these are some of the situations that might come in over the phone for you and I'd be curious if we have time at the end to hear if you have had calls like this or if you've been confused or wondering immigration law was implicated in someone's situation so I'll go into these in a little bit more detail bawah is the Violence Against Women Act this is a law that was created by Congress when they recognized that there were citizens and permanent residents who were bringing their spouses into this country or marrying them here and then not following through and applying for their legal status for them and not petitioning for them and that this was usually out of sort of a cycle of abuse and control where as part of the domestic violence in the relationship they were keeping them in the home keeping them undocumented keeping them under the threat of deportation and Congress recognized that this was preventing these women from reaching out and requesting help when they needed it from calling police from even going to you know a domestic violence advocacy organization because they're so isolated and afraid that if they go leave the home immigration is going to pick them up and that's a really common threat that we hear from clients that their husbands have told them and it's not only women who are victims we've had many men who have been in the same situation so this law the VAWA law takes away the power of the abuse of spouse by allowing the victim to apply for her own legal status she can file what's called a self petition if she can show that her abuser is either a spouse parent or a child who is a US citizen or permanent resident and if it's their spouse that's abusing them they need to show that it's a legitimate marriage and they need to have some kind of evidence that they were the subject of battery or extreme cruelty in the marriage so that might be a really detailed affidavit it may be in order for protection it may be letters from friends who have witnessed the abuse or neighbors who've heard the abuse it could be just a variety of evidence to help show the abuse in the relationship and she would also need to show that she has good moral character if that petition is approved then that person can then eventually apply for their lawful permanent resident status as well so it's a really excellent law without which we would have a lot of victims who should otherwise have legal status afraid living in the shadows being afraid too and that cycle of abuse no no they can have they can have entered illegally and still qualify yep good question mm-hmm so if you yeah for all kinds of factors that go into it obviously mm-hmm so that's oh yeah yeah lots of I mean it's it's a there are a lot of factors that go in to avow a case and I'm wondering has anybody heard of that before anybody heard of VAWA before yeah I think in something that people especially the victims are surprised to learn exists because they're living in fear and once they're told well we can apply for you you know we don't have to involve your husband at all he doesn't even have to know that you're doing this and he'll be surprised later when you get your legal status and you know you can leave him you can work and be independent of him UV says UV says anybody heard of that all right yes you visas have been sort of the growth area of immigration law for the last five years for immigration attorneys and I think the immigrant community in general is more and more aware of it all at the time there's a lot of outreach you know that's done on the radio you know church presentations stuff like that our office talks to law enforcement quite a bit also about the U visa the U visa is somewhat similar tavola in the sense that it's meant to protect victims particularly victims of domestic violence but it's also meant to encourage people to report crime generally and to not be afraid to contact police we know that a lot of immigrants because of their undocumented status are afraid to call 9-1-1 to report a crime when the police does show up because they're afraid that they're going to be taken away and reported to ice because they're afraid it's going to come out that it's not they're undocumented and again a lot of times the abuser has just ingrained this notion in their mind that that's what's going to happen and that their children are going to be taken away or that even he the abuser is going to be taken away sometimes that's actually accurate he will be taken away but the rest of it isn't so it was really this law was passed really to encourage victims to cooperate with law enforcement without fear about their immigration status and it's also to give humanitarian relief to crime victims and their derivative family members the first requirement is that you have to have been a victim of a qualifying crime and this is the long list of qualifying crimes you can see it's very you know serious violent crimes mostly that are included here the ones that we see most often at our office are domestic violence which can include a violation of an order for protection and as well as just straight-up domestic assault and sexual assault the other big one we see is felonious assault basically felony level assault and quite often the victims we see are people who have been robbed at gunpoint severely injured in an assault or a robbery basically if these victims have cooperated with police in in there or if the case was prosecuted if they testified or if they gave information to the prosecutors then they can potentially qualify for Au visa but they need to show that they've suffered substantial harm and that's why the list of crimes is a list of pretty serious crimes you see that there's no property crimes on there you know no sort of simple mugging will count there needs to have been a serious injury that results if not physical injury then emotional injury and with the emotional injury they really recognize that domestic assault even if the battery isn't severe the psychological impact is quite severe in many instances so they have to show the substantial harm they have to show that they have information about the crime if the victim was a child and they're unable to sort of give the report then someone else can give the report on their behalf and that child can still qualify and again they need to show that they either were helpful are being helpful or going to be helpful in the future so there's no statute of limitations on when the crime even occurred because the law says they will even count people who were helpful in the past I had a client who was a victim of attempted murder in 1994 and we got the case approved so there's you can go back quite a ways at which I think amazes people because the incentive for reporting the crime is gone you know they already reported it a long time ago and yet the law recognizes also that some humanitarian relief might be in order for that person the crime has to have occurred in the United States so you know it has to have been has to have occurred here and been investigated or prosecuted here one thing that's not on the on your handout but that I added because I'd never want to forget this is that the applicant can be a direct victim or an indirect victim and an indirect victim might be for example a mother whose child was a victim of sexual abuse the mother reports the crime to police she's the one giving the Meishan in helping with the prosecution perhaps and she's also suffering that substantial mental harm that's the requirement of the law so in this case even if her child is a US citizen and doesn't need the U visa herself then the mom can apply as an indirect victim and this is sadly a case scenario that we see too often but it's something of a relief for these mothers to know that they're going to be able to get status and be here to help their child as their child lifts the child's a US citizen is going to live here for their whole life they want to be here and not you know be afraid to be here and not be afraid that they're going to be separated from their child so it's a really good way to use the law to help people the primary requirement before we can file any application to immigration is something called a law enforcement certification this is basically a form that we send to Minneapolis Police where we say our client was a victim of domestic assault on this date as you can see from the attached police report she was cooperative in the investigation she gave you information about the assault we believe she's eligible for Au visa will you please sign the certification attesting to her cooperation if we get that signature on the certification then that's the primary requirement for the application and we can build the rest of the application after that the thing we run into is that not every law enforcement agency wants to help out with that and they're not obligated to under the law you know the federal law says they should but there's no obligation and we see that simply there are some police departments that feel that they don't want to have anything to do with illegals so we're really sad for clients in those cases because they won't be able to apply for the U visa the benefits are really excellent if your case is approved and right now it's taking about a year for the application to be processed but if your case is approved you can get legal status for four years and you get a work permit with that legal status and then after three years you can apply for your permanent or your green card and you can also include children minor children in your application spouses if the victim was under 21 they can include their younger siblings or their parents as well as derivatives so we've been really able to help a lot of families under this law victims who are partially culpable for the criminal activity obviously wouldn't be eligible so if there's a mom who was making her child vulnerable to sexual abuse by her partner or something like that she wouldn't be a good candidate for the U visa also sorry just on that one screen so they can't apply for any federal public benefits right okay right and a lot of times people qualify for benefits through their you know their children are eligible to get benefits because their children are citizens so a child might get em FEHB coverage you know something like that okay but most immigration statuses in fact just generally it's very hard to get public assistance okay even if you're a green card holder you know medical assistance and all that it's hard the distinctions between the U visa neva WA are that with au visa you need a law enforcement investigation or prosecution whereas you don't need that with vowel with valla the abuse needs to have happened from a certain family member you know a spouse a parent or a child and that family member needs to have citizenship or lawful permanent residents in place of the law enforcement in the case of au visa yeah court well yes because the court document would usually suggest it had been prosecuted so in that case yes something what kind of court documents do you mean like just the documents show that the person had came in and testified or yep exactly or the evidence that says you know this is where we got information from whatever yeah exactly if you have that your wording it it seems like if they don't sign off on it then we don't they don't that's all well that's true so for the U visa you need to their needs law enforcement has to have been come involved either police or some other bodies such as the Department of Labor or Child Protection or something like that okay I was just wondering because you made the statement that if they don't sign on it yep you know then right so the first step is law enforcement has to have been involved and then also they need to sign off on the certification so like an avowal case you can have domestic violence that's happening but the person never reports it to police and that's okay but with au visa if there was never any report to police such that we could ask police to sign off that the person cooperated in their investigation then we don't have au visa case what if they clarify that well police are are say they're racist or they don't want to sign off on it is there another way that they can prove that they are cooperative like like I said oh I see what you're saying oh I get it now okay sorry a little slow on the uptake there okay so maybe the police won't certify but this person also helped the prosecution right yes we approached the prosecutor's office in that case and and and usually if the case was prosecuted we just go straight to the prosecutor anyway yeah no good question sometimes we have the option to pick between police and prosecutor some time and I would say the majority of the cases though are never prosecuted the offender has gone on arrival maybe he's been deported whatever we or maybe they just choose not to prosecute it so in that case we we can't go to the prosecutor and we only have the police as an option but why wouldn't you be able to use the prosecutor's office considering they're the ones who make the decision under if they prosecute or not when they still have the paperwork that says you know Jane Doe came and yeah boarded this and but there but then they didn't they didn't need much they didn't need any further input from the victim in that case I have tried that believe me I have when the police has refused because you know that's just it they then sometimes in the case of the prosecutor's office but sometimes they don't even do that Mary and I think that what your question helps implicate really is that when it when it relates to people who are illegal in the country here there are a lot of there are a lot of different layers that go on and all many of those layers are tinged with racism or with or with you know just attitudes about you know us versus them and those types of things and so sometimes you can have you can have the letter of the law you can have the spirit of the law and then you can have the attitude of the law those the other law yeah yeah all right but I think those I think you're very astute to be asking no that's a great I'm glad you clarified that because that's true I mean we don't get it from one you know agency we will certainly try whoever else was involved in it and sometimes we run up against neither party wants to certify because it's just part of the general law enforcement culture of the region there and those are really sad cases I won't name names but there's a couple of a couple of towns and counties that we've had trouble with just because of an overriding anti-immigrant sentiment and in those instances all we can really do is try to educate them a little bit more I think it helps when we can tell a law enforcement like look all you're doing is saying that the victim gave you information and helped in the investigation or the prosecution of the crime you're not the one giving her a visa you're not the one giving her a green card she's going to have to undergo a background check she's going to have to show that she suffered substantial harm as a result of this crime and that's all a decision for immigration that's not going to be on law enforcement I think they worry that they're giving a carte blanche to someone and they don't want to become an involved in immigration so that's often if we can educate them about that then they're sort of like oh alright that's not so bad then we'll sign off on this and it really in the end it helps their community policing because then people are more willing to reach out to them and they can apprehend more criminals and they can investigate more so that's the intention of a lot and hopefully it works limited to 10,000 young really so is that happening we're like at the beginning of the year they're just gone and then the rest of the year there's no chance for you to get one or yeah they it usually takes almost a whole year for them to go through them or maybe more like nine months and the fiscal year starts in October every year so that's when they open up a new allotment of ten thousand so if someone didn't get approved in this year chances are then as soon as the new year opens then there'll be one of the first to get one of the ten thousand and people I mean the processing is taking about a year right now but no one is ever sort of like cut out because the ten thousand cap was up oh good question did I miss anything else there okay it's you and so yeah you've got about 15 more minutes okay I think we'll make it ours so the t visa is kind of like the U visa except the the victim in question is a victim of a severe form of human trafficking usually sex trafficking or labor trafficking and in this case we only give five thousand per year so sex trafficking would be like you know people brought into the country to work in prostitution rings without any chance of ever getting out of it they're probably not even being paid they're basically being imprisoned and controlled in labor trafficking we see people brought into the country I mean it can be any type of different instances I think there was a case recently locally of people brought in to work as subcontractors in poultry processing just working under horrid conditions housed in these trailers and cramped conditions not being paid their full wages and really not being allowed to even leave the premises so that might be another instance also domestic servants who are brought into the country and base the captain indentured servitude in the home of their employer those are examples of trafficking where the victim through force fraud or coercion came into the country and now is stuck here you have to be physically present in the u.s. to qualify for the t visa and you also have to comply with any requests from law enforcement as they investigate the crime and you also have to show that if you return to your home country you're going to suffer some extreme hardship or unusual harm and that may be like punishment from your traffickers or you know who are going to seek you out in your home country juvenile so I think I'll just kind of go over this part quickly but you know we see a lot of young people youth you know ages 13 14 who are traveling to this country on their own you know fleeing problems in their homeland maybe they've been abandoned by their parents maybe their parents are here and they're trying to reunite with their parents maybe they're fleeing gang recruitment in their home country so they are smuggled into the country and oftentimes we see them being caught at the border and then they're in removal proceedings and we try to see what we can do to help them these are some of the ways that maybe they could qualify for status again au visa if something's happen to them here maybe vow if they have a family member of using them TPS if they came on time to qualify for TPS and they're from one of the TPS countries asylum I think is a big one right now for a lot of youth from Central America who are being threatened that if they don't join these criminal gangs they're going to be killed those cases don't work very well they're not really recognized right now under immigration law unfortunately and then I'm going to get into the deferred action for childhood arrivals which you mentioned earlier and another big one is special immigrant juvenile status and this may be something that the law is somewhat complex on this but your antenna may be raised if you have someone calling into saying I'm calling because you know there's this young man who plays on my son's soccer team and he doesn't seem to have any parents and he's from another country and I don't know what to do with him and you know I don't think he has any papers but I don't know and I don't know if I should bring him to the authorities or whatever we actually had a client like this of a young man coming to try to find his dad his dad wanted nothing to do with him he was sleeping in a park you know in southwestern Minnesota when this mom took him in and she got a guardianship of him through the court system and once she got into that court system this child became eligible for special immigrant juvenile status because they were able to get a court order saying that it's not in the best interest for this young man to go back to his home country and he's been abandoned by his parents so it's in the best interest that he remained here when we have that type of situation where we have a court order from a juvenile or family judge saying these things then we're able to go in on the immigration side and apply for legal status for them through the special immigrant juvenile status it's quite complex and our office when we work on these cases we always need a partner on the family court side to do that other portion of the case because we don't do that part of it but it's something that works for young people here who have been abandoned or abused or neglected I think I already covered that okay daca deferred action for childhood arrivals this is what people have come to know as dreamer the DREAM Act was proposed it was is up in Congress I don't even remember when that was a few years ago and it didn't pass basically the DREAM Act would have given a lawful permanent resident status to young people who came here brought here as children by their parents they're here through no fault of their own and they're in school you know they've graduated from high school they're in college they want to go into the military they really want to contribute and continue living in their home country that they consider home but there's no legal status available to them they can't get driver's licenses if they're undocumented so Congress tried to get this legal set status especially for them it didn't pass and so last June President Obama announced something called deferred action for childhood arrivals did anybody hear about that June 15th of last year it was really big news in her office it was just like I mean the hotlines were lighting up we were just all really excited it we haven't seen anything like that in quite some time so basically what this policy said is that you know if you came into the u.s. before the age here we go if you came into the u.s. before the age of 16 and if you've lived here continuously since at least June 15th of 2002 the present time and if you're not over age 31 as of the date of this announcement June 15 2012 and you don't already have some other lawful status and you're currently in school or have graduated from school or gotten your GED and you don't have any disqualifying criminal convictions then we're going to allow you to remain here and what's called deferred action status which is basically a quasi legal status it's not a full it's not really legal status it's just basically a prosecutorial discretion decision by the government to say we're not going to deport you if we encounter you because you have this quasi legal status and we're going to give you a work permit valid for two years with that work permit you can apply for Social Security card you can apply for a license which is just huge for a lot of these young people all of their peers are getting their licenses and they can't and they can't get a job and stuff like that so deferred action allows them to finally get some sort of recognition that they can be here lawfully with authorization and it really has been so exciting to work with these young people we've you know when they come in we have to make sure that they're in school so we see their school transcripts and you know we have these young people who are getting straight A's and taking Japanese and you know just really inspirational stories of people that we would want to remain in this country and they're not All Star students either but you know really these people have grown up here and they only know the United States is home so deferred action has really been an excellent thing and the response has been huge at our first community workshop that we gave last summer we had over 600 people come and we had a line out the door when we got there at 7:00 in the morning and someone had come at 10:00 at night the night before to be first in line so it's just been the first glimmer of hope for so many young people that they're going to be able to get legal status in the country and we hope that this will sort of be a springboard for more comprehensive immigration reform so that their parents can also not live in fear of being removed and can participate more fully in our communities I believe are these also know I think what's meant when people say anchor babies I think what particularly politicians are meaning by that is u.s. citizen children who are born here there's a misconception that if you have you know if you have a baby here that that baby will be a citizen but there's a misconception that that somehow gives that parent some rights to be here legally it's really not easy you know as I talked about you can't you can't even cancel your deportation unless you also have ten years here and your baby would have to be quite sick to be able to anchor you here in the US you know to be able to stay here and also US citizen children have to be 21 before they can even apply for their parents so there's not much of an anchor there I mean it's not easy even if you have children in this country yeah I think that's the end of my prepared presentation oh one thing about the deferred action is you need to be at least 15 to be able to apply so we have applicants who haven't yet turned 15 but that we'll probably be seeing soon so between the ages of 15 and 31 are the people who qualify for that well in salina I was if you could comment on our problem with Zoey this this month you'll recall that Zoey is getting on with her life and has been volunteering at the Hope Springs true kitchen and women's shelter and she met Dory from Bahrain and Ori has overstayed her student visa and she's afraid to go back to Bahrain because she had participated in the protests that took place there during the Arab Spring Zoey has become friends with Dori Zoey knows that Dori is here illegally and Dory is would be happy or excuse me Zoey would be happy to have Dori take up and sleep on the couch since smelly Melly Melvin is no longer around he went out when Herman went out the door and Zoey's also concerned because Dori has a former boyfriend nicknamed the Hulk who dealt with heavy drugs and the Hulk happens to be also stark stalking Dori so with that fact pattern what kind of advice would you have for Zoey was always called again you know she's calling every month we're getting tired of her I would say Zoey should have Dori look into the possibility of applying for asylum you know we don't know if the reason that she left Bahrain was because of any persecution that was going on she came on a student visa but maybe it was just handy to come on a student visa because she was being harassed or threatened in her home country because of her political activities so if she had faced persecution based on her political opinion in Bahrain or she has a well-founded fear that she will be persecuted then she may want to apply for asylum and in that case the first referral that I would make for an asylum case is the advocates for human rights right and I'm glad that you raised that everyone we're we're good on our training materials but we're not perfect so what I'd like you to do is to go to page 7 of your training materials and up above where you see we refer to st. cloud and Wilmer for legal aid I'd like you on to write the number 5 there and I'd like you to write in the advocates of human rights advocates for Human Rights actually on this slide as well there we go if you could write it on number 6 1 2 3 4 1 9 8 4 5 that was our mistake and not getting it into the training materials that call for justices mistakes so so write that in and then when we post the training material on the website we will have corrected that ok yep and they do only asylum they work with a lot of volunteer attorneys but they would be happy to evaluate her case and and see if she has a viable case and then so it's not exactly clear everything that's going on with the Hulk in Dory situation sounds like kind of a dangerous character she has been he's been stalking her and so it may behoove her to get an order for protection if she feels that she's in danger from him as of yet I don't see any immigration relief there that she qualifies for yet but you know if he if she gets an order for protection and he then violates it she's you visa eligible if she cooperates with the police and making a report and and giving them information so that might be an option there yeah I think it's certainly always a good idea to for Jory as she now is out of status to an immigration attorney to evaluate her whole case who knows if maybe there's something else in her fact pattern that we don't know about that could that she could qualify for okay does anyone have any Thank You Selina does anyone have any questions for Selina yeah touched on sponsors oh yeah many calls the individuals have had sponsors and have left them they haven't really I don't been there to fill the position that they are supposed to and they're at a loss of what they can do and what their rights are so I think that brings up a good point that we sort of glossed over in this very you know overview type training but when you're applying for a family member that's a great question I'm just going to give the whole intro and then I'll touch on that um when you're applying for a family member like say that you're a citizen and you want to bring your spouse and so that your spouse can become a resident one of the requirements of your application for your spouse is showing that you're going to be able to support them when they come here and then that they're not going to be a public charge as they call it that they're not going to you know have to request welfare right away or something like that so what they require is for that petitioning family member to file what's called an affidavit of support and that's basically showing that I as the petitioner in this case make enough money for my family size so that I'll be able to provide for my spouse she won't have to request public assistance which i think is weird because the law doesn't allow people to apply for public assistance for so many years anyway but anyway they make them show that they're going to be able to financially support them here say that that petitioner doesn't make enough money then they can get a co-sponsor they can get a friend or a family member someone who's at least a resident or a citizen to say okay I will be an additional sponsor for this person I make this much which is enough for my family size plus one more person according to the federal poverty guidelines that you use so I'll be a sponsor too so that's why people have sponsors in a visitor visa texts sometimes before they'll give someone a visa to come and visit here they'll also say we want to know that someone's going to provide you lodging and meals and financial support so that you won't work during your visit now those aren't really enforceable affidavits of support in those cases but in a family based case if the person you're talking to is a permanent resident I don't know maybe didn't get into that majority because you've had doing the sponsors have been someone that was not a relative of the individual calling on their behalf saying this person suffering financially the resident the person saying that my sponsor is not right so like and when they say my sponsor do they say who it was they didn't say mister who the person was but they did say there was not a family member oh so must be a co-sponsor in that case and so the family member isn't helping out enough I guess and then the co-sponsor isn't helping them out too well the law says that this is the affidavit of support is an enforceable contract that they can sue that person on so if they can find an attorney and have the means to pay an attorney to bring that person to court then that might be an option it may be that that co-sponsor doesn't now have the means to continue providing support or may just be that they don't they don't want to do it I don't know all right though because they aren't they not legally here able to work the individuals themselves that has this name if they've been sponsored it usually means that they have their green card now okay yeah so that that and that was a prerequisite for them getting their green card was showing that they have a sponsor yeah are you familiar with the citizenship test being like $1500 is that the going rate or I had somebody while yesterday for looking for assistance you know to pay for the tests and I had heard that it was like upwards of a thousand they were asking for and I'm just like you know we don't have to do that but yeah familiar with agencies that do help sometimes people pay for the cost or that kind of outside here well the application for citizenship is called the form n400 and the filing fee for the whole process which includes the tests because they have to be interviewed on their application and then at that same interview they'll do the tests as well but the filing fee for that application is six hundred and eighty dollars it's not more than that so I don't know if maybe they were talking about the attorney's fees that they were getting charged and that that could be and there are attorneys I was in private practice for a while and it sounds a little bit high but you know there are attorneys fees sometimes but once you pay that fee then that covers the costs for getting fingerprinted having your interview going to the process and hopefully getting your citizenship our office does representation and citizenship cases so we're a great referral for citizenship as well as the other mid you know Minneapolis legal aid smiles we all do citizenship so depending on where the person lives that might be a good referral for them and if the person is low income and can document that then they can also qualify for a fee waiver so that they wouldn't even have to excuse me pay that six hundred and eighty dollar filing fee Oh so yep and are all of our nonprofit offices offer representation free of charge okay yeah but at your hundred ninety seven percent right so yeah we only take people who are below a certain income level for their family size so if they're above that you know they may need to go to a private attorney I think you know when I used to work in private practice we charged seven hundred and fifty for our representation in the case which included preparing the whole application preparing them for their interview and then going to the interview with them and representing them at their interview so yeah any other questions yeah yeah provide referrals if say someone comes in at like 200% of poverty line do you provide referrals to those people are yeah we do we and and our our initial intake process is over the phone and so we that the first thing we do is income screen so that before we get too much farther we can say oh sorry but we will send out we have a list of experienced immigration attorneys that we will send them for sure yeah and do you ever make exceptions at all very rarely only if there's some compelling policy reason for doing it maybe the it's a really I don't know super compelling situation it hardly ever happens so I've heard about it in the past before my time but really just to be fair to everyone and because you know the only way that we're able to provide services is because we get donations and funding from government and charitable foundations yeah any other questions yes well I was just wondering if I could ask a question you did you've had quest calls about sponsors any other types of calls that people get that where you think maybe there's an immigration issue there yesterday someone told me that they gotten calls from a lot of domestic violence victims and so she was happy to know that there were options yeah I didn't know about that I had a call a caller that was concerned about you know her husband's abusiveness and she just didn't want to go forward because she was you know so that's go forward with the police he may Norway yeah she just um you know felt powerless in her situation and I think to have known that would have I would have been able to empower her hmm you know yeah if people know that the law that there's something that says that if you cooperate with police you won't be deported in fact you'll be helped out and you'll get a legal status you know usually right but what you want her to do on that kind of a call is you want to you know you don't want to give her advice to talk to the police you want to give her you want to give her a referral to the immigration law center because it's you know there are always all kinds of wrinkles with everything and and you know we don't we I would read we would rather her talk to a lawyer before she talks to the police for sure so well I don't know I mean I sometimes that's what that's what we say well we do some safety checking safety planning but that's kind of yeah but yeah but I mean we just tell people if you feel in danger oh maybe maybe that isn't appropriate for your role I'm not sure yeah I don't know I love danger call 9-1-1 yeah yeah I wasn't like an immediate okay type of thing more or less he was just manipulating her and yeah you know well would it be appropriate for you to say you know I've learned that there sometimes are protections under the immigration law for victims of domestic violence yeah that might be worth talking to yeah yeah my and I didn't interpret your your question and being that that there was immediate danger no I know yeah I think that was they've trained these guys are exceedingly well trained and they know that in those situations when somebody is like immediately under the under literally end of the gun yeah call 9-1-1 yeah I can't even imagine the breadth of knowledge that you have to have to make all of the referrals on so many different topics so to keep all of it in mind is incredible all right well listen uh Celina thank you very much for just about out of time and I've got to squeeze a few things in will you help me in thanking Celina for a really honest you're I want to thank everyone for completing the surveys that we sent out they were extremely extremely helpful and they're helping guide how our program is going to go forward for the next year so thank you very much for doing that secondly I want to in a reinforced you know generally there's not going to be any way for you to triage somebody who's calling is immigration law question I think the most important thing is to figure out is there may be an immigration issue here and if there is then our referrals need to be to the immigration law Center or to legal aid or something along that nature along those lines we do however in materials at the bottom of page six and up to the top of page 7 talk about a new brand new pro bono clinic that the Minnesota State Bar Association is put together on immigration law and this is essentially for green card holders who want to go forward with with getting their status to become naturalized or more permanent and so if you have a green card holder and they're asking with that kind of question I think that it's really safe to refer them to this clinic and they can get some questions answered and then if there's something more serious or more detailed they can go on from there and maybe get a referral to the Immigration Law Center but that would be a more targeted referral there it is of course good to know about those various visas and good to know about the deferred action program I wanted to reinforce that our website continues to be present your we've been seeing the numbers thanks Celina we've been seeing the numbers go up on people that have been viewing our website please continue to send them to us remember we have a number not a lot but we have a handful of for-profit organizations that you will not have in your database because of the way your database works but you can be referring them to our website to the button that says legal resources right juliette resources for help my colleague Julian is always there telling me and then they can scroll down and go to alternative 2-1-1 referrals and they'll be able to access that those resources we were thrilled on the survey to see how much that you're referring folks to the low bono programs at in Hennepin County and Ramsey County please continue to do that what you don't know is in the background is there going to be the creation of a community law firm that will be focusing on low bono so the extent to which those those low bono referrals are being made that helps justify the community law firms existence as well once that is up then we can be making low bono referrals right to that community law firm but it's going to take a while before that's up and last but not least next month we will have somebody from the volunteer lawyers Network here to talk simply about all the work that the vln does there are a very important Community Resource and they are now starting to spread their work across the state and where they're not just simply in the Twin Cities so I think it's important that we just devote our time to one agency get to know them better and get to know what they're doing across the state okay anyone have any questions I'm sorry I'm rushing but it's the nature of the beast and I'm really glad that you were asking Selina the questions that you did we're you know well we're never going to have somebody back again at least not for a long time on immigration so it's really great to get your questions out anything else okay well tell you what if you they come to you email us and we'll get Selena to answer those questions for you she's a legal liaison so we have this great arrangement with her okay okay thank you everyone have a great weekend all right take care you

Channel: Call4JusticeMN

Views: 36,927

Rating: 4.6290321 out of 5

Keywords: immigration law, citizenship, call for justice, united way, undocumented worker, visa, visas, forms of relief, law, minneapolis legal help, st. paul legal help, t-visa, u-visa, asylum, Minnesota (US State), Court, Immigration (Organization Sector)

Id: ZBLsmypKAY8

Length: 82min 56sec (4976 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2013