The Orlando Sentinel reported that today, January 12 is the one (1) year anniversary that a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that killed over 230,000 people and left about 1,000,000 homeless in Haiti, the western hemisphere’s poorest country. In an effort to help Haitian nationals both in the U.S. and in Haiti, President Obama and his administration acted quickly and extended benefits such as Humanitarian Parole  and Temporary Protected Status (TPS). TPS [...]

The Orlando Sentinel reported today that the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee has invited speakers for a hearing scheduled for later today to provide information about immigration reform and its impact on the State of Florida. Both Florida’s Governor and Attorney General who began their terms in office just last week, support an Arizona style immigration related legislation. We at Pappas Law Group [...]

The New York Times reported earlier this week that Governor Patterson issued pardons last week to 24 lawful permanent residents (green card holders) with prior criminal convictions, to avoid deportation to their native countries. The Governor’s term and by extension, the pardon panel will end on December 31, 2010.  The panel received over 1,100 applications for executive clemency this year and the pressure to render decisions on [...]

The Orlando Sentinel reported today that critics in the federal government have raised concerns that although the President has heightened immigration enforcement efforts on businesses that are suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants, and despite the fact that the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (USICE) has already conducted more workplace audits of the I-9  (Employment Eligibility Verification) forms, critics feel that the government’s enforcement has been has been too lenient [...]

The Orlando Sentinel reported today that in Florida, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (USICE) officers under the leadership of Marc Moore who was appointed by the DHS earlier this year to head the USICE’s Office of Detention & Removal at the Miami Field Office, oversaw the deportations of over 15,000 foreign nationals, most of them were deported because of their criminal convictions. [...]

The Los Angeles Times reported today that in an interview last week in Los Angeles, the President put fault on Republicans in Congress for their unwillingness to come together and work with him to to reform our country’s immigration laws that would legalize approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants. During the interview, he mentioned that when immigration reform was being debated in Congress back in 2006, 11 Republican [...]

The New York Times reported today that New York State Governor David A. Paterson formed a special clemency panel consisting of a group of five (5) individuals from the governor’s office and state agencies earlier this year to expedite the granting of clemency, otherwise known as pardons to lawful permanent residents (green card holders) who are in deportation proceedings for criminal convictions that [...]

The Orlando Sentinel reported today that the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano reported yesterday that the U.S. Customs & Border Protection (USCBP), a component of the DHS, reported a 17% reduction in arrests in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 which ended on September 30, 2010. According to the DHS Secretary, the reduction in arrests is the result of a combination of factors such as the downward economy, heightened [...]

The New York Times reported this past weekend about an immigrant from St. Kitts named Joseph E. Joseph who registered to vote back in 1992, voted in every presidential election since then and because of what he referred to as “doing his his civic duty”, he now faces deportation. In the U.S., only citizens are authorized to vote in [...]

I read an article today titled, “Social Networking Sites and Their Importance to FDNS.”  The article discussed how officers from the USCIS’ Fraud Detection & National Security Directorate use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and similar sites in their efforts to combat immigration and visa fraud. Immigration fraud schemes have been on the rise and sentences for the same are becoming increasingly stiffer.  Recently in [...]