I’ve been an immigration lawyer for 23 yrs, and in that time I’ve seen many different approaches to our “border crisis”. Border crossings by immigrants without visas have occurred for decades, and for the longest time border crossers were treated fairly loosely by a system that knew we were a better landing place for many people in other parts of the world – particularly for our neighbours in the South.
It seems that in the current political climate, government shutdowns are an annual event. This leaves many of our clients asking: how does this impact our immigration case? For this and any future shutdowns, we have created a general list of what is affected, and what maintains the status quo. When the government is in shutdown mode, many government agencies are affected and people are told to stay home – without pay – and put on furlough (after previous government shutdowns, these people were paid retroactively for their time off work). All non-essential agencies are shut down ASAP.
Every year between 700,000-750,000 people are naturalized in the United States. The process can be straightforward, or incredibly complex depending on the case…
As the migrant “caravan” approaches Tijuana, the Trump administration has been working to limit the amount of immigrants who can enter the US through asylum. In a presidential proclamation that was released on November 9, 2018, the wording makes it very clear that these new limits in the area of asylum are being specifically put in place to stop people who have been slowly making their way towards the US border.
In a major turn around from my last post, Canadians working in the legal pot industry will be mostly admissible to the US without incident as long as they are coming into the States for reasons unrelated to the marijuana industry.
