Musings on Immigration

On Friday, January 6, 2017, the Board of Regents filed an appeal to the Court of Appeals (under a new law change that directs Mandamus appeals (like this one) to the Court of Appeals instead of the Supreme Court (as of January 1, 2017).  This appeal does NOT stay the judge's Final Order compelling the Board of Regents to permit DACA recipients to pay in-state tuition. Also on Friday, January 6, 2017, the Board of Regents filed a "Application for Supersedeas, " which means they acknowledge their is no automatic stay and they are asking the Court to put the Final Order on hold during the time the appeal is pending (which will take months). Within three hours of receiving it, I have filed an Opposition and Response to that Application, but as many of you know, the Court's are now closed because of the winter storm.  I expect, however, that the judge will rule on the Application, either granting it or denying it, on either Monday or Tuesday. If the judge does not ru...

In the 2015, the Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) began denying licenses to many non-U.S. citizens who are in the United States with employment authorization, also known as a work permit.   DDS had previously granted driver's licenses to these same immigrants for decades. The change came as DDS secretly changed their interpretation of existing law and decided that some immigrants with work permits did not have the proper "immigration status," However, the Georgia legislature had already decided that the immigrants whose licenses DDS is denying do in fact have the proper immigration status for Georgia driver’s licenses.   How is DDS acting against Georgia law? The relevant Georgia law is found in O.C.G.A. § 40-5-21.1, “Temporary licenses, permits, or special identification cards; foreign licenses or identification cards as evidence of legal presence in the United States, ” and specifically states that the following non-citizens may obtain a Georgia driv...