Attorney Susan Scheer’s April 2016 Immigration Law Memo
DISTRICT COURT HOLDS HEARING ABOUT KIDS’ RIGHT TO ATTORNEYS IN IMMIGRATION COURT
A federal district court in Seattle heard arguments in a lawsuit in March seeking to ensure that all children in immigration court have legal representation. The case received a flurry of attention when press reports revealed that an immigration judge deposed in the case said he had successfully taught three-year-olds immigration law. Many children nationwide would have no realistic opportunity to argue for appointed legal representation or to fairly present their cases to an immigration court and that the government would continue to force them to represent themselves against a trained prosecutor seeking their deportation. Professor Susan B. Long found that, in immigration proceedings completed between July 2014 and August 2015, 44 percent of unrepresented unaccompanied children present in court for their hearings were ordered to leave the United States, as compared to 14 percent of children with legal representation and only the remaining 28 percent ended in a decision allowing the child to remain in the U.S. Courts order thousands of unrepresented children deported each year.
INCONVENIENT FACTS ABOUT A MEXICO-U.S. BORDER WALL
When Donald Trump speaks of the Great Wall he would build between the United States and Mexico, he fails to account for a few inconvenient facts. There are millions of tourists, workers, students, and entrepreneurs who cross the border each day. There are the billions of dollars in two-way trade that sustain millions of U.S. jobs.
Consider these important facts about the U.S.-Mexico Relationship:
- The total value of U.S.-Mexico trade is more than $1 billion every day.
- More than 13 million Mexicans traveled to the United States in 2010, spending $8.7 billion.
- Roughly 6 million U.S. jobs are sustained by trade with Mexico.
- More than 20 percent of all U.S. jobs are tied in some way to trade along the border.
Removing 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in two years would shrink the labor force by 10.3 million workers and reduce real GDP by $1 trillion. Declaring war on Mexico would be a supremely self-destructive act.
STUDY: IMMIGRANTS FOUNDED 51% OF U.S. BILLION-DOLLAR STARTUPS
A new non-partisan study on entrepreneurship gives some credence to the tech industry’s stance that American innovation benefits from robust immigration. A study from the National Foundation for American Policy shows that immigrants started more than half of the current crop of U.S.-based startups and that they are collectively valued at $168 billion and create roughly 760 jobs per company in the U.S. Tech leaders Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have called for increasing the number of H-1B visas that let skilled foreign workers stay in the country. The visas are capped at 85,000 per year. In 2015 and 2016, the lottery to obtain an H-1 visa hit capacity within one week and nearly 233,000 H-1B petitions were received during the filing period.
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