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 Dept. of State Issues a Waiver for HIV  Positive UN AIDS Meetings Attendants
It is U.S. policy
not to grant visas to those who test positive for HIV. However, a special
exception is being made to those wishing to attend the United Nations
General Assembly High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, which will take place
June 9-11, 2008 in New York City. The U.S. Department of State announced
that it has decided to grant a blanket waiver to meeting attendees who
are otherwise eligible for a visa.
 ICE Releases Report on Compliance with Detention
Standards After Severe Criticism in Press
In
response to some very critical articles by the Washington Post of
treatment of detainees, the Office of Detention and Removal Operations
(DRO) has been directed to make semi-annual reports regarding their
adherence with ICE’s National Detention Standards, and on May 9, 2008
U.S. Customs & Enforcement (ICE) released the first such semiannual
report. ICE uses the following detention facilities for those detained
for immigration related reasons:
- Service
processing centers (SPCs), which are owned and operated by ICE;
- Contract detention facilities (CDFs), which are
owned and operated by private-sector businesses on behalf of ICE;
- Facilities operated by government entities under
intergovernmental service agreements (IGSAs).
There
are more than 350 local and state facilities under IGSAs, 7 CDFs, 8 SPCs,
and facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Office of
Refugee Resettlement. Each semiannual report will focus on half of the
total number of facilities.
Each
facility given one of the following ratings: At-Risk, Deficient,
Acceptable, Good, or Superior.
The
overall final ratings for
the 176 facilities reviewed in the semiannual report released are as
follows:
·
SPCs: 100% (7 of 7) received a Final Rating of Acceptable or
above.
·
CDFs: 100% (4 of 4) received a Final Rating of Acceptable or
above.
·
IGSAs: 87% (144 of 165) received a Final Rating of
Acceptable or above.
Those
detention facilities that did not score well will receive a follow up
inspection in 90 days. For more information, please visit www.ice.gov.
 USCIS Makes favorable amendment to
the Child Status Protection Act
The Child Status Protection Act (CSPA)
determines who is a child for the purposes of immigration. If a U.S.
citizen or permanent resident files an I-130 Petition for Alien Relative
on behalf of his/her child before the child turns 21, the child will
continue to be considered a child for the purposes of immigration even if
the child turns 21 while the petition is pending.
Previously, the CSPA only allowed beneficiaries of a visa
petition that had been approved before August 6, 2002 (which is when the
CSPA was enacted), to be covered by the CSPA if the beneficiary had filed
a permanent residence application on or before August 6, 2002 and had not
yet received a final decision on the permanent residence application
prior to August 6, 2002. However, as explained on the USCIS website, the
CSPA has now been expanded in the following way:
Under prior
policy guidance, USCIS considered an alien beneficiary of a visa petition
that was approved before August 6, 2002 to be covered by the CSPA only if
the beneficiary had filed an application for permanent residence (either
adjustment of status or an immigrant visa) on or before August 6, 2002,
and no final determination had been made on that application prior to
August 6, 2002. This new policy extends CSPA coverage to aliens who had
an approved visa petition prior to the enactment of CSPA but who did not
have a pending application for permanent residence on the date of
enactment of the CSPA.
Aliens who were ineligible under the prior policy and who subsequent to
the enactment of the CSPA never filed an application for permanent
residence may file an application for permanent residence to take
advantage of this new interpretation. Aliens who filed an application for
permanent residence after the enactment of the CSPA and who were denied
solely because they had aged out may file motions to reopen or reconsider
without a filing fee.
USCIS’s Guidance Fact Sheet, which
may be accessed at www.uscis.gov,
also provides the following clarifications:
- The new guidance does not include aliens who,
prior to Aug. 6, 2002 (date CSPA was enacted), had a final decision
on an application for permanent residence based on the immigrant
visa petition upon which the applicant claimed to be a child.
- If an alien filed an application for permanent
residence after the enactment of the CSPA, and the application was
denied, that denial must be ‘solely based’ on a finding that the
applicant was not a child because the CSPA did not apply. An I-485
can be denied for various reasons; if your I-485 denial was based
for a reason other than for CSPA, then this revised CSPA guidance
does not apply to you.
- Finally,
if you had an approved immigrant visa petition before August 6,
2002, and did not file an I-485 after the enactment of the CSPA, you
could still benefit if (1) you are filing as an immediate relative
or (2) your visa became available on or after Aug. 7, 2001, you did not
apply for permanent residence within one year of petition approval
and your visa becoming available.
 The Border Fence and
the Attempt to Save the Jaguar
A new player in the border fence
debate appears to be “the JAGUAR” As recently reported by CNN, jaguars
are a rare in the U.S., and experts estimate that there are no more than
120 left in the U.S. Jaguars cross
the U.S./Mexico border regularly to breed in northern Mexico, but the
border fence that is currently being built seriously threatens the
livelihood of the jaguar.
According to CNN, the Department of Homeland Security recently waived 30
environmental laws in order to finish 470 miles of the fence by the end
of the year. Those studying the problem have commented that the border
fence has had many negative environmental repercussions in addition to
the precarious fate of the jaguar.
The problems are partially caused by drug runners and human
traffickers, who in an effort to avoid the fence, have been pushed up
into the mountain areas. This
human invasion seriously threatens the native animal populations.
To read more
about the “immigration vs. the environment” dilemma, check out these
interesting articles:
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