The American Immigration Law Council reported that the administration recently proposed a new rule that would help keep American families together—the “Proposed Rule on Provisional Unlawful Presence Waivers of Inadmissibility for Certain Immediate Relatives”.  This proposed rule would streamline the application process for many relatives of U.S. citizens currently eligible for a green card by minimizing the amount of time that applicants would have to be away from their families before being admitted into the United States. While the proposed rule is certainly a welcome change and would be an improvement over current procedures, there are ways in which the rule could be improved to help even more immigrants.

• Expand eligibility for new streamlined process to additional family members:  Under the proposed rule, the streamlined process is only available to spouses, minor children, and parents of U.S. citizens who claim that their absence would create an extreme hardship for the U.S. citizen.  It does not apply to other people eligible for a green card through the family preference categories. Expanding the proposed rule to people whose absence would cause extreme hardship for LPR spouses or parents and unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens would rescue additional American families from prolonged separations.
• Expand eligibility for new streamlined process to people in removal proceedings:  People who are currently in removal proceedings, who have been issued a Notice to Appear (NTA), or who have already been scheduled for an immigrant visa interview are not eligible for a provisional unlawful presence waiver.  In order to apply, these individuals would have to get their cases terminated or dismissed; those whose cases have been administratively closed would need their cases to be reopened for voluntary departure; and those who have been issued an NTA would need to get the NTA cancelled. These are serious obstacles to eligibility. Allowing them to apply would help keep more people together.
• Include enhanced due process protections:  Under the current proposed rule, there is no appeals process for those who are denied a provisional unlawful presence waiver. Applicants that are denied could petition for a waiver only through the current process, outside of the U.S.  Allowing immigrants to appeal their denials or to file for the waiver again in the U.S. would be another positive step to avoid potentially harmful separations.

It’s important to note that none of these changes to the proposed rule would mean anyone would automatically get the waiver. Those eligible would have to go through the application process and could be denied the waiver. But expanding eligibility to additional family members and individuals in removal proceedings, as well as allowing immigrants to appeal their denials and apply from inside the U.S. would be an improvement to the rule and would go a long way in keeping more American families together.

The American Immigration Law Foundation reported that current U.S. immigration law provides few options for foreign graduates of U.S. universities with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (“STEM” degrees) who want to stay here to contribute their skills and knowledge. Not enough American students are interested in these fields, even as employers regularly cannot find enough people with the high-tech and scientific knowledge and skills they need to fill available positions. Luckily for the United States, international students seek out these majors and excel in them. But increasingly, we lose these talented graduates to other competitor countries where immigration laws are friendlier. This is, of course, an enormous loss to the U.S. economy, as international students with STEM degrees often create successful businesses and jobs in the United States. Last week, DHS took a strong step forward by expanding the list of STEM fields for foreign graduates applying to training programs after graduation.

The program, called Optional Practical Training (OPT), allows foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities to apply for practical work experience in the United States for up to 12 months. Students who graduate from certain STEM degree programs can extend that work experience for an additional 17 months. DHS’s recent expansion of the list now includes additional degrees in agriculture, computer science, engineering, biology and physics.

This action is significant because it indicates that DHS takes seriously the role it can play in attracting foreign students to this country and understands their important contributions to the U.S. economy. Study after study shows the positive impact of talented international students and others who choose to build their lives in the United States. Foreign students serve as a pipeline of talent and innovation that help fuel the U.S. economy. In fact, many foreign entrepreneurs, who have started successful U.S. companies and created jobs for Americans, got their start in the United States as foreign students.

While expanding the definition of STEM degrees is certainly a step in the right direction, we cannot predict the list of academic fields that will encompass all the knowledge we need, today and tomorrow, to innovate and to expand the economy. Tech entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa made a bold, nearly heretical statement in the Washington Post last week in an article entitled “Silicon Valley Needs Humanities Students” Wadhwa argues that the study of disciplines like history and psychology develops a critical person-focused view of the value of new technology and understanding what motivates people. “We need musicians, artists, and psychologists, as much as we need biomedical engineers and computer programmers,” Wadhwa said.

Fortunately, top-notch colleges and universities in the United States provide a tremendous pool of talent that goes beyond STEM. DHS would be wise to expand access to the 17-month extension of OPT to include these talented individuals outside technical and scientific fields.

But even that is not enough to keep the United States competitive in this global economy. Ultimately, we need comprehensive immigration reform to make United States more open, accessible, and attractive to the world’s best talent and future leaders. Learning and discovery have always been grounded in the movement of people and ideas across borders. A broken immigration system places limits on the United States’ ability to maintain a robust system of educational and scholarly exchange, and the immigration system is an important part of the face that the United States presents to the world. For these reasons, comprehensive immigration reform is a critical issue for higher education.

The National Journal Reported that a bipartisan Senate immigration bill introduced on Tuesday would create two new types of visas to attract and keep immigrants skilled in the fields where the United States is weakest: science, technology, engineering, and math. The bill is designed to follow on the success of the Jobs Act in helping start-ups get capital.

Technology firms have increasingly complained that without changes to the current immigration system, they may be forced to move research and other projects offshore so they can hire the high-skilled workers they need.

The legislation, known as the Start-up Act 2.0, would create a new visa for foreign students who receive graduate degrees from U.S. schools in science, technology, engineering, or math fields. Those foreigners could eventually obtain permanent residency as long as they remain active working in the so-called STEM fields for at least five years. It would also create a new entrepreneur’s visa for 75,000 skilled legal immigrants a year who start a U.S. business, employ Americans, and invest or raise capital in the United States.

The bill, a revamped version of a measure senators offered late last year, includes tax incentives to help new start-ups and would authorize research and development focused on helping universities bring research to market.

“Paired with the access to capital is access to talent,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said at a news conference with the bill’s other cosponsors, Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del.; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; and Marco Rubio, R-Fla. “We are in a global competition for talent. And if we had the immigration policies back in ’90s and ’80s that we have today, I’m not sure we’d see the tremendous innovation explosion that took place in America in the 1990s.”

He and others pointed to research from the Kauffman Foundation that found most of the new jobs created in the United States in recent decades were generated by companies that were less than five years old. Echoing the concerns of tech companies, President Obama has endorsed calls to make it easier for firms to keep talented foreign students in the United States after they graduate. Obama’s likely GOP presidential challenger, Mitt Romney, also said he supports allowing foreigners with STEM degrees from U.S. schools to remain here.

So far, however, efforts to reform skilled immigration policies have been weighed down by the politics surrounding broad immigration reform.

The senators acknowledged the difficulty of moving any bill, particularly one connected to the hot-button issue of immigration during an election year. But its sponsors say they hope their bill can generate the same momentum that helped propel the Jobs Act, which was signed into law in April.

“We’re of the opinion that now is the time, not the lame-duck session. Now is the time, not 2013,” Moran said.

After the news conference, a handful of tech lobbyists approached Senate aides and asked them what they can do to help move the legislation. Michael Petricone, the Consumer Electronics Association’s senior vice president, told National Journal that the legislation is something the “vast majority of senators agree” makes sense and is “low-hanging fruit.”

In addition to CEA, many other tech groups and firms support the bill, including Google. “As a onetime start-up that now employs thousands of Americans and continues to hire many more each year, we are proud to support Senators Moran, Warner, Rubio, and Coons’ Start-up Act,” former Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., who is now Google’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement. “Small businesses often use Google to grow, expand, and thrive online; and helping these businesses succeed is a key to our success.”

A handful of other bills have been introduced in the Senate and House that also would make it easier for U.S. companies to keep high-skilled foreign workers in the United States. A bill that would remove per-country quotas on work visas offered by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, passed the House late last year but has stalled in the Senate.

The New York Times reported that a bipartisan group of four senators proposed on Tuesday easing visa limits for highly skilled immigrants and foreign students, a move that challenges Congressional leaders on their fixed positions on the issue of immigration during an election year.

Two Democrats, Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Chris Coons of Delaware, and two Republicans, Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Jerry Moran of Kansas, introduced the legislation, which is a break for both parties. Democrats have traditionally held highly skilled worker visas as a bargaining chip for measures on lower-skilled immigrants that are far less politically popular. Many Republicans have opposed any expansion of visas.

But the senators, appearing at a news conference on Tuesday, said the struggling economy necessitated steps that move past those positions. Mr. Rubio is trying to gather support for his version of legislation that would offer legal status to young illegal immigrants brought to the country as children, but he said he would not try to link his version of the Dream Act to the new high-skilled worker proposal. That has to pass on its own merits, he said.

Senators Coons and Warner agreed, even as they reiterated their support for comprehensive immigration legislation.

“We’ve got to grow jobs,” Mr. Warner said.

“We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Mr. Coons said.

The new legislation would create a new type of visa for as many as 50,000 foreign students graduating from American universities with master’s degrees or doctorates in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. Visa recipients would have to show they stayed in science and technology fields for five consecutive years before they could get permanent resident status. The proposal would also create 75,000 new visas for immigrant entrepreneurs in the science and technology field.

The legislation would also eliminate numerical limitations on employment-based visas that use per-country quotas. And it would make tax changes that favor start-ups, including making permanent President Obama’s 100 percent exemption on capital gains taxes for investments in small start-ups.

“It’s new businesses that create jobs,” said Robert Litan, vice president for research and policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, not necessarily small businesses.

The lawmakers are trying to build off the success they had with the JOBS Act, which focused on easing capital to small businesses. Joining them at the news conference was Steve Case, a co-founder of America Online and one of the JOBS Act’s biggest champions.

“This economy was built on risk-taking entrepreneurs,” Mr. Case said. “It’s important that we double down.”

For decades, immigration measures have been far more controversial than straight business bills. Democrats and immigration advocates have held back visas for highly skilled workers and temporary agriculture worker programs to martial support among business groups, reasoning that once they passed, Republican allies would have secured their priorities and any effort to get a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants would lose the few Republican allies it has.

Immigration opponents have said high-skilled visa expansions take good-paying jobs from Americans and work as a disincentive for students who should be striving for those jobs.

Those factors make the new push for four relatively new senators an uphill climb.

“As the new guys, we didn’t get the memo that in an election year, we’re supposed to take the year off,” Mr. Warner said. “Clearly, China is not taking the year off.”

The American Immigration Council reported that after ICE Director John Morton issued a memo last June outlining how and when ICE officials should exercise prosecutorial discretion in immigration cases, many were optimistic that the memo’s implementation would relieve backlogs and help the agency focus on higher priority immigration cases. Months later, however, folks are finding that one large group of people has limited access to this review process—immigrants without legal representation. In fact, nearly half of all immigrants in removal proceedings  appeared without legal representation in 2011, also known as “pro se.” While immigration attorneys often explain the effect of these prosecutorial discretion policies to their clients, pro se immigrants may be unaware that new policies are even in effect.

Unlike immigrants who have legal representation, pro se immigrants do not have access to information specifically directed at them explaining the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, how to obtain it, or what it means. This compounds the already serious problem that most pro se immigrants do not have access to information about what relief might be available to them. Moreover, whether or not they are aware of possible options for relief, they may be unaware of the implications of either accepting or foregoing an offer of prosecutorial discretion from ICE.

Underlying all of these deficiencies is a fundamental inequity—immigrants who cannot hire or find scarce pro bono attorneys are not entitled to government-provided representation in a deportation process that has devastating consequences, including separation from family for decades or forever.

To prevent pro se immigrants from falling through the cracks, immigration authorities can take a number of steps to ensure they understand what prosecutorial discretion is, how they can seek it, and what they should do after receiving (or not receiving) an offer of it. First, ICE should advise pro se respondents prior to reviewing their files and explain how to submit documentation for agency officials to consider. Second, if ICE declines to offer a favorable exercise of discretion, agency officials should inform pro se respondents how they can “appeal” the decision to higher agency officials. Third, when ICE offers a favorable exercise of discretion, the agency should provide information explaining the consequences of accepting such an offer. And finally, prior to approving a favorable exercise of discretion, Immigration Judges should affirmatively confirm that pro se immigrants understand these consequences.

By adopting these recommendations, immigration officials can help alleviate one of the most fundamental inequities of the removal process: that the government does not provide attorneys to immigrants who cannot afford one.

The American Immigration Law Council reported that while the U.S. economy continues to recover at a sluggish pace, the administration continues to emphasize immigration reform’s critical role in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. This week, Cecilia Munoz, the Domestic Policy Council Director at the White House, spoke at a forum hosted by The Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution about the administration’s commitment to immigration reform and easing pathways for foreign investors in the United States.  Sadly, however, talented and dynamic foreign entrepreneurs seeking authorization to direct, operate, manage, or work for their investment vehicles often face tedious barriers. Easing these barriers would benefit our economy and enhance our ability to out-compete other countries in the modern global economy. After all, with out foreign entrepreneurs, we wouldn’t have such U.S. companies as Yahoo, Google, and Intel.

To its credit, the administration has taken some progressive steps forward. For example, last August, USCIS announced a series of operational, policy, and outreach initiatives to spur job growth and fuel American economic competitiveness. The initiative included the announcement of an H-1B temporary visa category and an EB-2 National Interest Waiver Category to foreign national entrepreneurs. This announcement plugs important gaps in the availability of immigration options to foreign investors.

While foreign business owners have utilized the E and L categories for short-term stays, and the EB-5 category for permanent residency, these options present limitations. The E visa is limited to nationals of countries with which the United States has entered into appropriate treaties, the L visa is categorized by unpredictable adjudications, and the EB-5 visa’s $1 million capitalization requirements are often out of reach for many new investors.

The new H-1B temporary visa policy is significant, however, because it lifts a previous restriction barring self-owned business from sponsoring themselves for H-1B status. Affirming the availability of both H-1B visas and EB-2 National Interest Waivers to foreign nationals is also important because it opens the door for many investors with appropriate qualifications and/or achievements to clear immigration hurdles in the United States.

Although many welcome these two visa categories, USCIS has not yet provided further detail, leaving immigration attorneys to work with their clients to sufficiently document stringent visa requirements. Given the high stakes for our economy, one hopes that DHS and the White House view this announcement as a first step in a longer series of changes. Changes in policy must be accompanied by a thorough programmatic review of adjudications. H-1B visa adjudications, for example, are routinely characterized by burdensome and often-unnecessary Requests for Evidence (RFEs) on topics such as educational equivalence and the bona fide nature of a job opportunity.

The inconsistency and complexity of the immigration process renders foreign investors leery of making the necessary investments in the United States. While many other rules, including tax and securities regulations impact foreign investors in the United States, immigration rules are particularly significant as a threshold issue determining whether foreign nationals can even lawfully work in the United States. Adjudicators, who appear to be trained to find any reason to deny an application for benefits, must be trained to shift their focus to the actual legal and regulatory requirements of H-1B and EB-2 National Interest Waivers applications and to adjudicate applications in the spirit of this announcement.

It is essential that USCIS recognize the importance of immigrants to job creation in the United States and facilitate, rather than hinder, the immigration of dynamic foreign entrepreneurs to the United States.  This will significantly promote our country’s edge in a very competitive global economy.

The Department of State provided the following information regarding the recent priority date movement for China-mainland born and India EB-2 categories, as well as information on projections for visa availability in the EB-1 and EB-2 preference categories. The following information will be included in the June 2012 Visa Bulletin, which should be posted soon. D. CHINA-MAINLAND AND INDIA EMPLOYMENT SECOND PREFERENCE CATEGORY IS_UNAVAILABLE Despite the retrogression of the China and India Employment Second preference cut-off date to August 15, 2007, demand for numbers by applicants with priority dates earlier than that date remained excessive. Such demand is primarily based on cases which had originally been filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for adjustment of status in the Employment Third preference category, and are now eligible to be upgraded to Employment Second preference status. The potential amount of such “upgrade” demand is not currently being reported, but it was evident that the continued availability of Employment Second preference numbers for countries other than China and India was being jeopardized. Therefore, it was necessary to make the China and India Employment Second preference category “Unavailable” in early April, and it will remain so for the remainder of FY-2012. Numbers will once again be available for China and India Employment Second preference cases beginning October 1, 2012 under the FY-2013 annual numerical limitations. Every effort will be made to return the China and India Employment Second preference cut-off date to the May 1, 2010 date which had been reached in April 2012. Readers should be advised that it is impossible to accurately estimate how long that may take, but current indications are that it would definitely not occur before spring 2013. USCIS has indicated that it will continue accepting China and India Employment Second preference I-485 filings during May, based on the originally announced May cut-off date. E. EMPLOYMENT FIRST AND SECOND PREFERENCE VISA AVAILABILITY Item F of the May Visa Bulletin (number 44) provided projections regarding visa availability in the coming months. Information received from the USCIS after the publication of that item requires an update in the projections for the Employment First and Second preference categories. Employment First: Based on the current rate of demand, it may be necessary to establish a cut-off date at the end of the fiscal year in an effort to limit number use within the annual numerical limit. Employment Second: Based on the current rate of demand, it may be necessary to establish a cut-off date for this category for all countries other than China and India. Such action may be required at any time during the next few months. Please be advised that the above are only estimates for what could happen during the next few months based on applicant demand patterns experienced in recent months.

On May 7, 2012, the U.S. district court in the Northern District of California issued a final judgment and permanent injunction ordering USCIS to respond to requests for A files under the Freedom of Information Act within the statutory 20 day time limit and to determine FOIA appeals within the 20 day time limit required under the law. The injunction takes effect immediately. The court also ordered USCIS to follow, implement, and execute the terms of the 1992 Mayock Settlement Agreement, which provides that a requestor (separate and apart from Track 3 processing) is entitled to expedited processing upon a showing of “exceptional need or urgency.” This is demonstrated by showing that “substantial due process rights of the requestor would be impaired by the failure to process immediately, and the information is not otherwise available.” Previously, on October 13, 2011, the court found that USCIS engaged in a long-time pattern and practice of violating the FOIA time limit provisions that prejudiced attorneys’ abilities to fairly represent their clients in immigration matters. (AILA Doc. No. 11101431). The FOIA litigation arose out of a naturalization application that was denied based on the allegation that Plaintiff gave false testimony with the intent to obtain an immigration benefit, and thus lacked good moral character. Evidence of the false testimony was allegedly contained in the government’s A file. USCIS delayed Plaintiff’s FOIA request to obtain the evidence, and then ultimately refused to disclose it. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled on March 21, 2012, that Plaintiff was eligible for naturalization. The court found that the Plaintiff did not provide false testimony on either his I-485 or N-400 applications, noting that, in the instances where Plaintiff’s responses were deficient, he provided reasonable, credible explanations for the omissions. It also found that the Plaintiff consistently volunteered information to USCIS to enable it to make its decision. As a result, the court held that the plaintiff was a person of good moral character during the relevant three-year period, and was eligible for naturalization.

CNN reported that immigrants created 28% of all new firms last year. They were also twice as likely to start a new business when compared to those born in the United States. It’s a notable shift. Nearly all new firms are small, and many are hiring new workers, seeking small business loans and shaking up established industries.

For one, immigrants are over-represented in lower wage sectors like construction, which was hard hit during the economic crisis, according to Rob Fairlie, a professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz. But they need to pay bills like all the rest, and so they have turned to entrepreneurialism, Fairlie said.

“Recession drove low-skilled workers into figuring out what to do,” said Fairlie, who authored a recent report for the Kauffman Foundation.

He said the same applies to Hispanics, who are creating new businesses at a faster clip than any other ethnic group. Hispanics make up more than half of the nation’s 40 million foreign-born, and they are starting businesses at a rate that exceeds even their population growth.

DeVere Kutscher, chief of staff at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said Hispanics are playing a key role in the recovery.

“Hispanic entrepreneurs are driving economic development, and their enterprises are creating jobs and helping lead the country out of recession,” Kutscher said.

The figures in the Kauffman Foundation report, based on Census data and the U.S. Labor Department’s current population survey, help show what the post-recession small business landscape is becoming.

Expect more like Maribel Lieberman, who left Honduras for the United States as a teenager in 1980. Her mother pleaded for the girl to drop her dreams of architecture school and train as a bilingual secretary instead.

After several jobs, she started MarieBelle New York and now employs 23 people at her own factory, selling gourmet chocolates in lower Manhattan.

“We’re more accepted now, and psychologically for me, it was a great help,” she said. “We’re becoming more integrated into American culture, and it’s giving us the freedom to achieve the American Dream.”

Although she left Honduras decades ago, she joined the growing share of immigrants launching businesses here when she opened her own catering company in the mid-1990s. Back then, immigrants made up only 14% of all new entrepreneurs. That figure has doubled, reaching 28% last year.

Startup data for 2011 are not yet available. But if the number of new firms is near a recent five-year average, immigrants launched at least 170,000 new companies last year. They have nearly doubled their rate since 1998. It’s unknown how many of those were started by the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who currently reside here.

Javier Palomarez, president of the Hispanic chamber, links the rise of entrepreneurship to the immigrant frame of mind.

“It’s certainly a boot-strap mentality: ‘I had the gumption to leave where I came from to get here. By God, I’m in the land of opportunity. These people need some good baked goods, so I’m opening a bakery,’ ” said Palomarez

Latino Justice reported that immigration policy is a complex web of competing local interests and national norms that has seen its share of debate in New Jersey in recent years. As the federal administration struggles to pass comprehensive immigration reform some New Jersey governmental units have impatiently jumped into the fray to either limit routine work encounters by day laborers (Freehold), expand the workload of local law enforcement to include immigration enforcement (Morristown) or delineate the appropriateness of referrals to immigration authorities (NJ Attorney General’s Office). As important as work, and education, public safety and health, is to the state’s immigrant community, no area of daily life is as tied to presence in this country as is housing. Regulating the housing market by definition regulates the presence of immigrants. And on that score, New Jersey recently added an important chapter to the protection of the civil rights of Latino and immigrant households in a federal court decision last month.

A landlord in Plainfield was sued in a novel application of federal racketeering laws by one its tenants who alleged that the landlord rented apartments disregarding a prospective tenant’s immigration status, knowingly soliciting undocumented immigrants for rentals and accepting flawed documentation as to their lawful immigration status. By refusing to investigate the lawfulness of its tenants’ presence in this country, the landlord allegedly harbored undocumented persons in Plainfield and induced others to come to this country illegally. And all of it, presumably, as an illegal racketeering enterprise under the RICO laws.

The case, Bolmer v. Connelly, was unprecedented, and if victorious would have completely altered landlord – tenant relations. Landlords would become immigration agents and forced to navigate the intricacies of immigration law to determine who is lawfully present – and if they got it wrong, criminal penalties would follow. Tenants would be subject to increased housing discrimination and potential homelessness with a disproportionate number of Latinos, lawful permanent residents and citizens alike, all subject to the worse aspects of attempting to import complex immigration expertise to untrained realty owners in the private sector.

LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the organization I direct, welcomed the opportunity to address the court to support the landlord and halt this misguided attempt to decentralize immigration enforcement of what is essentially a national issue. Our client was the Latin American Coalition, a nonprofit organization in Plainfield whose members include tenants, residents and property owners in the city and whose mission is to provide social services to Latinos in the area. Before the final arguments were made to the federal court the defendant landlord was unable to participate after initiating bankruptcy proceedings and the court invited our team of attorneys to take the lead on the defense. We prepared our arguments and with the help of a local law firm, Duane Morris, presented a vigorous defense to stop the extension of racketeering laws to routine landlord – tenant encounters. Last month we were vindicated when Judge Julio Fuentes of the U.S. Court of Appeals wrote an opinion recognizing that renting is not harboring in the criminal sense and dismissed the RICO claims.

Often lost in the immigration debates at the state level is that Congress has declined to establish criminal sanctions related to the mere presence of unauthorized persons in the country. A corollary to this scheme is that the Executive Branch frequently exercises its discretion not to remove persons who may lack lawful immigration status for a host of economic and humanitarian reasons. It was in this context that the lawsuit filed against Plainfield New Jersey property owners was lodged as part of a concerted effort to push the courts to make it difficult for New Jersey’s immigrants to assimilate into the social fabric through lawful means. The plaintiffs in Bolmer were represented by Deasey, Mahoney & Valentini, a law firm that unsuccessfully represented the City of Hazelton, Pennsylvania in support of its anti-immigrant ordinance against day laborers and tenants in that town. The Immigration Reform Law Institute also lent its support to the case and the Institute is tied to the Federation of American Immigration Reform, founded in the 1980s by John Tanton who has funding ties to modern day eugenics movement.

Thus Plainfield was caught in the middle of a unsavory national effort to localize immigration enforcement when the only sane and rational response to immigration in our ever increasing flat world of globalization is a national, federal response. Luckily for New Jersey’s Latino communities the federal courts stepped in and stopped what would have been a major housing crisis in the Garden State.