Musings on Immigration

November 2014, after a stinging defeat at the polls, and with little left to lose in his political legacy, Obama announced a series of DHS policy memos that, when implemented, would rearrange his deportation priorities (after becoming the Deportation President with more than 2.5 million people deported), and create formalized system of Deferred Action to help long term resident undocumented people (the backbone of much of our service sector) to obtain work permits (DAPA).  Obama apparently preferred to do this policy changes by memo, arguing that they were not "substantive" changes to regulation, and thus did not need to go through the formal Administrative Procedures Act (APA) rulemaking processing (which takes about 6 months, or less, done properly). State Attorney Generals, led by Texas promptly brought suit, under a series of novel theories, arguing that this was no mere policy change, but rather a substantive fix with massive benefits and enormous costs to the states...

Its a sad day for immigrants who simply want a chance. DAPA falls,  Obama fails, and politics live. http://www.nytimes.com/…/fifth-circuit-court-of-appeals-rul… A federal appeals court on Tuesday denied the Obama administration’s request to lift a hold on the president’s executive actions on immigration, which would have granted protection from deportation as well as work permits to millions of immigrants in the country illegally. Two of three judges on a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, left in place an injunction by a federal district judge in Brownsville, Tex. The ruling comes in a lawsuit by 26 states against actions President Obama took in November. Many of the initiatives were scheduled to take effect this month. The appeals court found that Texas and the other states did have sufficient legal grounds to bring the lawsuit and that the administration had not shown it would be harmed if the injunction remained in the place...

Perhaps it has been too long since USCIS has truly been held accountable for its actions that it has become desensitized to the legal constraints under which it is permitted to operate. The USCIS is not given carte blanche to make whatever changes or interpretations it wants to long-standing immigration law, without first complying with the Administrative Procedure Act (”APA”). Yet, twice in the last two months the USCIS has issued “memos” that so dramatically change the framework under which these key programs operate, that it has clearly violated the APA. USCIS has taken ignoring Federal Law to a new level with its recent actions. Of course we all know that the USCIS has been illegally changing the rules as they apply to individual cases for the last several years by engaging in “rulemaking by RFE;” making ridiculous requests for evidence, not based on any legal requirement, but rather, based upon someone’s bizarre notion of what they think the law should be, not what it really is. N...