Frustration with the state of the U.S. immigration system is endemic; restrictionists rail against any proposal that smacks of amnesty for illegal immigrants, and decry what they view as an overly-permissive system - one that is "soft" on illegal immigration, while immigrant rights groups argue...
The U.S. government is working hard to clear the backlog of pending cases currently clogging our immigration courts, hiring 44 new Immigration Judges in the past 12 months, but this apparently is not enough. Their efforts are laudable, but nonetheless have failed to reduce the...
The 2011 Annual Conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) was held in mid-June in San Diego, California. As in years past, several Murthy Law Firm attorneys attended the conference. This is one way we keep up to date with the latest developments in...
At the Murthy Law Firm, we receive many questions about immigration petitioning for relatives. While there are many nuances to this topic, we have simplified the initial, fundamental question: who may file for permanent immigration benefits to provide the "green card" for their relatives. These...
Visa and status are two concepts that are commonly confused. Under immigration law, the two concepts are distinct, even though in discussions, the word visa and the word status are used interchangeably. Visa, in immigration law, refers to the visa stamp affixed to one's passport...
From time to time, F-1 students fail to maintain their status, often unintentionally. A foreign national student studying in the United States can fall out of status either as a result of an action on his or her own part, such as working without authorization...
There is mounting concern about what some observers call the "reverse brain drain" - the emerging trend among foreign science and technology students to leave the United States after they complete their high-level training, rather than trying to find a way to stay here and...
It has been a problem for years: scam artists cheating immigrants out of their hard-earned savings, promising to help them with complicated immigration paperwork, only to make off with their money and leave them without a legal leg to stand on. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration...
Many MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers are among those who have to wait for years to obtain their permanent residence (or "green cards") due to their priority dates and/or immigrant visa numbers not being current. There are other individuals who also find themselves waiting, often for...
Based on the amount of air time, blog space, and old-fashioned printer's ink spent on illegal immigration, one might forgive the media-saturated public for thinking that most immigrants are here illegally, working in low-skill, low-wage jobs like fruit and vegetable picking, meat packing, landscaping, and...
