Free Republic

The majority of immigration court cases in 2013 involved immigrants who had legal representation, a reversal from five years ago, according to new data from the federal government. In 2013, 59 percent of those in immigration proceedings had legal representation—that's a big jump from 2009, when just 39 percent had lawyers. In 2012, a very slim majority of cases had clients with no legal representation. Those figures come from the 2013 statistical yearbook from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, which is part of the Justice Department. Nearly all new cases that came to immigration courts last year were...

The pro-Amnesty lobbyists who helped craft the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill included two "slush funds" amounting to $150 million. Millions of dollars will go to groups like La Raza, Casa de Maryland, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The Obama administration on Wednesday reversed a Bush administration rule that immigrants rights groups had criticized as unfair. Attorney General Eric Holder said he is vacating an order, issued by predecessor Michael Mukasey, which said that immigrants facing deportation do not have an automatic right to an effective lawyer. Holder said he is also instructing the Justice Department to begin working on a new rule. Charles Kuck, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called the move "the beginning of the restoration of due process in the immigration system." Kuck said that Holder's decision "recognizes we can't treat immigrants any...

Immigration lawyers raised unusually irate protests yesterday after the State Department and the immigration service abruptly withdrew tens of thousands of job-based visas they had offered last month to foreign professionals hoping to become permanent residents in the United States. The outcry was provoked by a terse announcement on Monday in which the State Department said it would not grant any more visas for the 2007 fiscal year to foreigners applying to become permanent residents based on their job skills. That notice reversed one the department had issued on June 13 announcing a two-month window starting July 2 for aspiring,...

What started as a simple marketing video for Downtown law firm Cohen & Grigsby has resulted in an Internet firestorm encompassing tens of thousands of YouTube viewers, Lou Dobbs and the U.S. Secretary of Labor. The video features portions of Cohen & Grigsby's "Seventh Annual Immigration Law Update," held May 15 at the Pittsburgh Hilton, Downtown. The segment of the video drawing all the attention is one in which lawyers from Cohen & Grigsby's highly regarded immigration practice advocate methods to comply with a law requiring employers prove that they have tried to find qualified American workers before applying for...

Future Of Immigration Policy Unclear In Wake Of Election by Gregory Siskind I've decided to reveal a big secret in this week's newsletter. Most immigration lawyers and most pro-immigration advocates are Democrats (myself included). That's probably why so many of my colleagues have been gloomy this week in the wake of Tuesday's midterm national elections. But partisan leanings may be clouding a happy truth - Republicans are increasingly pro-immigration and the future of immigration legislation in Congress may be rosier than the conventional wisdom would suggest. John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, in their new book THE EMERGING DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY,...