Miscellaneous Other Administrative Relief Announced by President Obama. After years, President Obama has finally announced his plan for Administrative Relief. It is not an “Executive Decision”. It is not an immigration Bill (although it is hoped that it may lead to one). The program will go under the name “Immigration Accountability Executive Action”.:
The following is a short description of some of the highlights of another part of the President’s plan dealing with other issues that were announced by President Obama as part of his plan that were not already covered as part of our previous five (5) articles about the President’s Announcement about Administrative Relief.
1. Immigration Court Reforms – The White House fact sheet notes that DOJ is going to announce a package of immigration court reforms that will address the backlog of pending cases by working with DHS to more quickly adjudicate cases of individuals who meet the new DHS-wide enforcement priorities and close cases of individuals who are low priorities. DOJ is also being directed to pursue regulations that adopt best practices for court systems to use limited court hearing time as efficiently as possible.
Note: In the White House briefing of 11/20/2014 it was noted that this package would address the qualification of accredited representatives and ineffective assistance of counsel issues.
2. Worker Exploitation – The Department of Labor, DHS, DOJ, EEOC and the NLRB will establish a working group to ensure workers are protected who are asserting workplace claims and where workplace investigations are ongoing.
3. ICE Personnel Reforms – ICE’s shift to criminal aliens has made their jobs more difficult without the appropriate personnel structure and components. This has hurt morale and presents other management challenges.
Accordingly, a recalibration of ICE’s workforce and personnel pay structure is being implemented. This should be completed by February 2015.
4. U and T Visas – The US Department of Labor is going to expand and strengthen immigration options for victims of crimes (U visas) and trafficking (T visas) who cooperate in government investigations. Three qualifying crimes are going to be added to U visa certifications (extortion, forced labor and fraud in foreign labor contracting) and exercise similar authority by completing T visa certifications for victims of human trafficking.
5. Naturalization – 8 million people are eligible to naturalize and have not. Secretary Johnson has directed USCIS to accept credit cards as a payment option for the naturalization fee. The pay.gov web site will be used to accept the payments and this will take effect by the end of 2015. Fee waivers are currently available for people whose income is no more than 150% of the federal poverty level. A 50% fee reduction will be available if the income is between 150% and 200% of the federal poverty level will be studied by USCIS. Secretary Johnson is directing USCIS to expand citizenship public awareness by launching a comprehensive media campaign targeting major media markets in California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington and Arizona which are collectively home to 75% of the country’s green card holder population.
For more information, please feel free to contact the Nachman Phulwani Zimovcak (NPZ) Law Group, P.C. at 201-670-0006 (x107). VISASERVE TEAM’S U.S. immigration lawyers or attorneys can also be reached by e-mail at info@visaserve.com or by calling us TOLL FREE at 866-599-3625. In the meantime, please be sure to check out our website athttps://www.visaserve.com for updates.