Should Immigration Service Employees Be “Looking for a Way to Approve” Petitions and Applications?

The answer is a resounding yes, according to this refreshingly outdated 1980 memo from INS Regional Director Durward E. Powell, Jr., regarding “Dispensing of Information and Adjudications Decision Making.”   

Powell admonishes employees that they should not consider themselves “guardians of the treasury of information on Immigration benefits, whose function is to dispense reluctantly that narrow portion of the treasury which relates to a specific inquiry.  Rather, all of us are, or should be, dispensers of total information, tailored to the entirety of each applicant’s situation. Tell them freely and openly not only what they are not eligible for but what they may be eligible for.”  

What an efficient and productive attitude for any agency employee toward her work. Some of the immigration agency employees I have encountered did seem to take this helpful stance, but others did not.  In fact, the same could be said about my encounters with DMV employees.

What are your thoughts? 

Thanks to Benders Immigration Bulletin Daily for the delightful link.

(Edit at 10:42 a.m.) As indicated in the comments below, Benders found this memo on the Nation of Immigrators blog.  The post, “New Year Resolutions for Immigration Officials,” is thoughtful and probably would interest anyone who is interested enough to be reading what I’ve written here.

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Thoughts About Violence Against Trafficked Women on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

November 25th is designated by the United Nations as “International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.”  The date was selected to “commemorate the lives of the Mirabal sisters,” who were assassinated on November 25, 1960 during the Trujillo dictatorship, as explained in the General Assembly resolution designating the day:

Previously, 25 November was observed in Latin America and a growing number of other countries around the world as “International Day Against Violence Against Women”. With no standard title, it was also referred to as “No Violence Against Women Day” and the “Day to End Violence Against Women”. It was first declared by the first Feminist Encuentro for Latin America and the Caribbean held in Bogota, Colombia (18 to 21 July 1981). At that Encuentro women systematically denounced gender violence from domestic battery, to rape and sexual harassment, to state violence including torture and abuses of women political prisoners. The date was chosen to commemorate the lives of the Mirabal sisters. It originally marked the day that the three Mirabal sisters from the Dominican Republic were violently assassinated in 1960 during the Trujillo dictatorship (Rafael Trujillo 1930-1961). The day was used to pay tribute to the Mirabal sisters, as well as global recognition of gender violence.

The resolution “[i]nvites, as appropriate, Governments, the relevant agencies, bodies, funds and programmes of the United Nations system, and other international organizations and non-governmental organizations, to organize on that day activities designed to raise public awareness of the problem of violence against women.”  

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Supreme Court Takes Pass on NLRB Undocumented Workers Case

4united_states_supreme_court_112904 The United States Supreme Court decided yesterday to deny certiorari in an NLRB case concerning whether undocumented workers are considered employees under Section 2(3) of the NLRA. Both the NLRB and the D.C. Circuit found that they were in Agriprocessors v. NLRB. The issue about the status of the undocumented workers became important because the company refused to bargain with the union once it won the election because seventeen out of twenty-one employees were challenged as being in the United States illegally.

Agriprocessors, a company that specializes in the production of kosher meats, has also been in the news lately after the company was raided by the government based on the employment of a large number of undocumented workers and after its top officials were arrested for lying about its workers’ citizenship status.

This is an interesting case because it can be contrasted with the view that the Supreme Court took in the case of Hoffman Plastics, in which the Court held that undocumented workers who were illegally fired under the NLRA could not seek backpay.

Like everything else in this area of the overlap of immigration law and labor law, it is unlikely this is the last we have heard about this issue.

Cross posted at Workplace Prof Blog.

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