Miami Immigration Lawyers Blog

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama told a Hispanic audience that he would continue to "push hard" for an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws even as his administration steps up border security and deportations.

Answering questions at a White House roundtable discussion, Obama said he has consistently supported revamping laws that regulate immigration and creating a pathway to citizenship for those in the U.S. illegally. Support for such changes has declined in Congress, particularly among Republicans, stalling attempts to pass legislation, he said.

"We're a nation of laws, but we're also a nation of immigrants," Obama said at the forum for readers of Yahoo! en Espanol, MSN Latino, AOL Latino and Huffington Post Latino Voices.

In the 2008 presidential election, 67 percent of Hispanic voters supported Obama and 31 percent backed the Republican candidate, Arizona Senator John McCain, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington. As the 2012 vote approaches, Obama's support has been waning because of the sluggish economy and an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent.

The jobless rate among Hispanics was 11.3 percent in August, according to the Labor Department.

Obama's approval rating among Hispanics sank to 48 percent in August from 60 percent in January, according to a Gallup Organization analysis of daily tracking poll data from Aug. 1-31.

Still, Gallup said that more Hispanics approve of his job performance than disapprove, 48 percent to 37 percent. By comparison, Obama's approval rating among the general public was at 42 percent in Gallup's Sept. 24-26 tracking poll.

More Deportations
Obama also defended his administration's tightening of border security and stepped-up deportations.

The U.S. arrested 2,900 illegal immigrants with prior criminal convictions over seven days in the largest such nationwide crackdown, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said today.

"What we've been doing is, with stronger border enforcement, we've been apprehending folks at the borders and sending them back," Obama said.

The event was streamed live at the White House website in English and dubbed into Spanish, the White House said.

About Revilla Law Firm, P.A.
Antonio Revilla is a Former U.S. Immigration Prosecutor and Miami Immigration Lawyer. Mr. Revilla founded his immigration law practice, Revilla Law Firm, when he saw a dire need for aggressive immigration representation and deportation defense in order to keep families united.

If you wish to receive more information about any immigration issue, you can contact Revilla Law Firm at 305-858-2323 to speak with Antonio Revilla. He can also be reached via email at arevilla@immigrationmiami.com or by phone (305) 858-2323.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide whether the length of immigrants' lawful residence in the United States should be considered in determining whether their children may be deported.

The court also agreed to hear six other cases from among the hundreds of appeals that had piled up over the summer. The new cases mostly concern technical questions in low-profile areas of the law like tax shelters and workers' compensation.

The immigration case is probably the most consequential of the new additions to the docket.

Federal immigration law allows people who have been lawful permanent residents for at least five years and have lived continuously in the United States for at least seven years to ask the government for leniency if they are threatened with deportation. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, has ruled in a series of cases that immigrants who entered the United States as children may count their parents' years here to satisfy the residency requirements.

The court accepted two appeals from such rulings, consolidating them into a single case.

One of the appeals, Holder v. Gutierrez, No. 10-1542, concerns Carlos M. Gutierrez, a Mexican citizen who became a legal permanent resident of the United States in 2003, when he was 19. Two years later, the government sought to deport him after catching him trying to drive across the border from Mexico with three undocumented minors in his car.

The other appeal, Holder v. Sawyers, No. 10-1543, involved Damien A. Sawyers, a Jamaican citizen whom the government sought to deport after he was convicted of "maintaining a dwelling for keeping a controlled substance." The conviction came 6 years and 10 months after Mr. Sawyers became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 1995 at the age of 15.

Neither man could himself satisfy the criteria that would have allowed him to seek leniency. The Ninth Circuit ruled that the time their parents had spent in the United States could be imputed to them.

In its briefs urging the justices to hear the case, the Obama administration said the Ninth Circuit's interpretation of the law was wrong and at odds with those of other appeals courts. The Ninth Circuit's approach, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. wrote in one of the briefs, "impedes the government's high-priority efforts to remove criminal aliens."

Lawyers for the two men, in briefs urging the justices not to hear their cases, said the government had ignored a Congressional policy favoring keeping families intact. They also noted that the attorney general remained free to deny leniency however the math was computed.

Source: New York Times
By: Adam Liptak
Published: September 27, 2011