Source: https://openborders.info/blog/tag/visa/
Timestamp: 2019-06-25 04:12:16
Document Index: 312919264

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 214', '§ 214', '§ 291', '§ 222', '§ 1202', '§ 214']

Visa | Open Borders: The Case
An addendum to visa versus authorized stay: “automatic visa revalidation”
January 5, 2015 Vipul Naik	8 Comments
In my previous post on the distinction between visa and authorized stay, I had stated that, unless you are a citizen or a permanent resident (Green Card holder), you need to have a valid US visa if you’re entering the United States as a student or temporary worker, even if it is a re-entry. However, you don’t need a valid US visa to stay in the United States. Recently, I discovered an interesting exception to this rule: “automatic visa revalidation” for people who make short trips to Canada and Mexico lasting less than thirty days. Here are here are official US government pages on the subject, and here and here are more details from the University of Washington and Murthy Law Firm respectively.
Basically, this allows people on some types of visas to re-enter the United States with an expired visa but a valid I-94 (Arrival Record Card). The following conditions are necessary:
The person’s absence from the United States was 30 days or less.
The person did not visit any countries other than Mexico or Canada in that period.
The person does not have a pending (or rejected) application for a new visa.
The person is not a citizen of one of the countries designated by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism. This includes Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan (more information here).
Additionally, the usual checks applied at a port of entry also apply here (for instance, those on the “F” student visa need to have an up-to-date travel signature, those on work visas need a letter from their employer indicating that they are still employed).
The typical use cases for this are:
People with family or other connections in Mexico and Canada can make short trips to visit family and friends back home.
Those engaging in tourism or sightseeing have their life made somewhat easier: a US student or temporary worker can go for a brief vacation in Mexico.
Those going for short academic or business trips, such as attending conferences, can do so.
The most interesting aspect, to me, of automatic visa revalidation is that it does not allow you to make a short trip to renew your visa. This means that somebody making a short trip to Mexico or Canada to renew an expired visa is taking the risk of being locked out of the US.
Why might those who have a pending application for visa renewal be excluded from automatic visa revalidation? This sheds a little more light on the observation from my preceding post that it is not possible to renew a US visa in the United States. I suspect that the same reasons apply: applying for a new visa should really be done in a context where a rejection can be used to credibly foreclose the person’s return or continued stay in the United States. If people with pending applications are allowed to return, then you might end up with a situation where somebody whose visa has been declined is legally present in the United States.
In fact, as the Harvard International Office explains, even if you have a currently valid US visa, applying for a new one as a Third Country National in Canada or Mexico makes you ineligible for re-entry into the United States until your new visa is approved:
Harvard students and scholars who hold F or J visas should not plan to travel to Canada or Mexico to apply for a visa from a U.S. consulate without consulting their HIO advisors in advance. Any Third Country National (a person applying at a U.S. consulate/embassy in a country other than his/her own) who applies for a visa in Canada or Mexico must have the application approved before returning to the United States. If the applicant is unable to get approval of the new visa application in Canada or Mexico, s/he will not be permitted to reenter the United States. The applicant may need to travel to his/her home country directly from either Canada or Mexico to apply for the proper visa in order to reenter the United States.
Featured image credit: H-1B wiki
PS: Co-blogger Michelangelo alerted me to a similar provision called “advanced parole” that is relevant for asylum applicants and might be used for DACA/DAPA recipients. See the USCIS page on Form I-131 for more. Michelangelo might do a blog post on the subject. I’ll link to it once it is published.
I-94port of entryUnited Statesvisa
US visa policy: a cross between Kafka, Orwell, racism, and aristocracy
June 25, 2013 John Lee	8 Comments
It’s always fascinating to see an immigration lawyer’s take on how the immigration process works. In 2009, lawyer Angelo Paparelli responded skeptically to then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she said she would push for a streamlined visa process. Then, he noted the most important thing she could do here would be to pursue the amendment or repeal of an obscure section of the US Immigration and Naturalization Act, noting that this law, § 214(b), is responsible for 99% of all non-immigrant visa refusals:
The 99% rate of § 214(b) refusals is important because:
Consular officers are not given sufficient resources to spend more than just a minute or two to consider whether a visa applicant truly deserves to receive a visa.
INA § 291 requires a visa refusal if the applicant “fails to establish to the satisfaction of the consular officer that he is eligible to receive a visa.”
Under the doctrine of “consular nonreviewability” (which more accurately should be dubbed consular absolutism) as interpreted by the federal courts and the State Department, decisions by consular officers on questions of fact (on which most visa refusals turn) are not reviewable by President Obama, Secretary Clinton or the Supreme Court.
In other words, imagine that you had one or two minutes to establish that you deserve a U.S. nonimmigrant visa. Your burden can only be met if it is “to the satisfaction of the consular officer.” No one but that officer has the power to decide.
Imagine if you had to prove to a government officer in 1 or 2 minutes why you should be allowed to attend university: you have to prove you won’t fail out, you’ll work hard, you won’t drop out (for any reason), and you’ll go far away after you graduate. Or imagine if you wanted to visit a popular tourist destination or travel for work, but had to prove to a government official in 1 or 2 minutes that you would go home afterwards (and wouldn’t abuse your travel approval to, say, move nearby or find a job there). Prove all this, in 1 or 2 minutes. To someone whose decision is final, and can never be overturned.
This particular provision is so noxious that it is cited multiple times in this UC Irvine report on international students in the US. Its repeal or replacement was an explicit recommendation of the report. The American Bar Association has (since 1990, according to Paparelli) recommended that the US government “establish increased due process in consular visa adjudications and a system for administrative review of certain visa denials, including specified principles.”
Yet a 2005 State Department report reviewing section 214(b) suggested the only way to improve it would be to expand it to include all classes of visas other than green cards. The State report explicitly considered the possibility of limiting consular officers’ totalitarian discretion, but rejected this out-of-hand on the basis that any publicly-published standards or requirements for visa approval ran the risk of increasing application fraud. The report stressed instead the importance of officers’ discretion and flexibility in feeling out visa applicants’ intent; no need for any explicit policy here. In other words, the US government doesn’t want you to know how you can get in!
The consequence of consular officers’ power to make or destroy lives in the span of a few minutes? Lord Acton: absolute power corrupts absolutely. Angelo Paparelli later followed up with some of the most ready-at-hand and egregious examples of consular abuse. He brought up two New York Times stories:
Septuagenerian German theatre director Peter Stein being denied a visa because he refused to laugh at a consular officer’s joke and instead complained he had to stand for 2 hours waiting for his consular interview
Former US consular officer Robert Olsen suing State for wrongful termination after he refused to implement a visa policy he considered racist and discriminatory against the poor
The second case is especially striking because Olsen presented documentation for his claims; the full judgment is especially worth reading, and I plan to write about it separately. Just note for now that some documented reasons for denial of US visas which Olsen complained about include gems like “Slimy looking[;] wears jacket on shoulders w/ earring” and “Bad Appearance. Talks POOR.” Paparelli concluded:
Regrettably for most refused visa applicants who lack the notoriety and influence of a Peter Stein, arbitrary consular decisions to deny a visa are virtually impossible to overturn… The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as interpreted by the courts, has enshrined in law “doctrines” of “consular nonreviewability” and “consular secrecy” (INA § 222(f) [8 U.S.C. § 1202(f)]) that in virtually all instances deprive the public, the courts and stakeholders (foreign visa applicants and their American sponsors) of a means to hold consular officers accountable. The interests of fair process, impartial consideration, respectful treatment, government transparency, the cultivation of a favorable opinion of the U.S. among citizens of other countries, and the application of solely lawful grounds to grant or deny a visa — all of these are thrown under the bus.
People in the US complain about feeling degraded when they have to choose between an X-ray and a pat down by Transportation Security Administration officials. How about placing your life in the hands of a government official who has the power to cut you off from your education (and, if the State Department had its way with H visas, your job) for something like “Bad Appearance. Talks POOR”? And no government official, not even the President himself, can do anything about it. US citizens may be tempted to complain that their treatment at the hands of the TSA makes them feel like they live in a police state. But it really is the over 1 million people who are refused US visas every year that truly know the feeling of a US government boot stamping on the human face forever. US visa policy:
By design has no clear rules or guidelines
Gives consular officers totalitarian power which not even the President can cross, thus empowering them to oppress people who:
Come from the wrong racial or national background
Disdain for basic fairness and human dignity: that’s just plain US visa policy. Have a nice day folks.
The photograph featured at the top of this post is the identification photo of Wong Kim Ark, a descendant of Chinese immigrants to the US who successfully sued the US government for US citizenship in 1898.
arbitrarinessimmigration enforcementimmigration lawUnited Statesvisavisas
May 26, 2013 John Lee	8 Comments
I recently stumbled across this interesting blog post by immigration lawyer Angelo Paparelli, where he talks about US visa refusals. The post is from 2009, responding to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s public statement that she was committed to streamlining the US visa process. Angelo mentions a staggering figure from the State Department’s fiscal year 2008 annual report:
In FY 2008, the State Department’s consular officers denied 1,481,471 nonimmigrant visa (NIV) applications under Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) § 214(b) (failure to establish entitlement to the requested NIV classification). While 19,837 (1.3%) of these refusals were overcome, almost 99% of the refusals prevented possibly deserving applicants from coming to the United States. [Note: These do not include the 64,516 refusals for specific grounds such as criminal conduct, public charge, material support of terrorism, etc.]
I checked the 2012 fiscal year figures and they are similar in every meaningful respect. To calculate the approval rate we need to bring in data on visas issued: with 8.9 million non-immigrant visas issued and 1.4 million non-immigrant visa applications rejected (virtually all because of 214(b)), we get an overall rejection rate of about 14%. I don’t know if that is too high or too low. But look at the data for yourself: these aren’t people with communicable diseases or criminal records. Over 1 million people have been refused student or visitor visas for the amorphous reason of “Failure to establish entitlement to nonimmigrant status.”
Presumably the intent is to deter fraud: there is a valid concern that non-immigrant visas can be used to get into the country and via overstaying, unlawfully “convert” the visa-holder to a de facto immigrant. But the main reason that is a problem is because the immigrant visa process itself deters bona fide immigrants! If you don’t believe this, one of Angelo’s colleagues recently crunched the numbers on current expected waits for some classes of lawful immigrants:
The wait for someone getting a visa today was as long as 24 years. The wait for someone starting today is much longer. An extreme example is Mexico F2B [Mexico-born “Unmarried Sons and Daughters (21 years of age or older) of Permanent Residents”].
The last time I took the difference between the cut-off date and the present date, then factored in the rate of “advance,” the anticipated delay for someone applying today under that category was 395 years. Mexico F-1 [Mexico-born “Unmarried Sons and Daughters of U.S. Citizens”] was “only” about 80-85 years.
In the US, gun rights activists love to say that if you make guns outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. By outlawing immigration, the US has ensured only outlaws will immigrate. Abortion rights activists love to warn that if abortions are banned, the only thing that will change is that more women will get hurt or die from unlicensed backdoor abortion providers: if immigration is banned, unsurprisingly millions will risk life and limb to immigrate.
If wait times longer than the human lifespan are not a de facto ban, I don’t know what is. You might as well tell someone he can own a gun when he lives to be as old as Methuselah (a man from the Old Testament who lived for over 8 centuries), or tell her she can have an abortion when she wins the Powerball (an American lottery). You may scoff. But that is exactly what the US government tells the person looking to join their family or earn a honest living. “Sure, we’re a nation of immigrants! If you’re a lottery-winning Methuselah, come on in.” And it is worse for those 1 million+ people denied the chance to visit or study in the US: because the US government has essentially outlawed immigrants, it has similarly had no choice but to do the same for visitors too. Through no fault of their own, millions of foreigners have been punished for the US government’s failure to fix its own laws.
arbitrarinessillegal immigrationimmigration enforcementUnited Statesvisavisas
US to foreigners: we’re a nation of immigrants! (If you’re a lottery winner, or Methuselah) is licensed by John Lee under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.