Florida Immigration Lawyer Blog

Can I really be deported, denied admission to the United States or a green card for a crime for which I was not even convicted?

Published on: January 14, 2016 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

The answer is clearly and unequivocally YES. Many people who are not yet citizens think that if they are arrested for a crime and the State or Government drops the charges, for any reason, they are home free and immigration officials can never use that arrest against them in the future. That is simply not true.

There are multiple grounds of inadmissibility that do not require a conviction in order for the government to use them against you. You may be thinking, I am in the U.S. lawfully, I don’t care about grounds of inadmissibility, those are for people who are here illegally or people just coming into the U.S. That’s not true either. Those grounds of inadmissibility, which do apply to people who entered without admission and those who are applying to come into the U.S., also apply to people trying to adjust their status to lawful permanent resident and get a green card.

Yes, that’s right, if you are a non-immigrant, visitor, student, employee, or in any other lawful immigration status and you want to get your green card, you have to pass all the same admissibility requirements that people coming in from overseas have to pass.

Big Changes to the Visa Waiver Program Could Effect Many People Who Won’t Know it Until its Too Late.

Published on: January 11, 2016 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

Congress recently passed legislation that changes who is eligible to enter the United States through the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). These changes are in reaction to the fears that terrorists and terrorist sympathizers will enter the United States exploiting the ease by which people can enter through the VWP.

The Visa Waiver Program was designed to allow citizens of certain countries to avoid the lengthy process by which most foreign nationals must apply for a visa at a U.S. consulate abroad. The normal process involves an application, a background check, an interview and sometimes more. Applications for short-term visitor or business visas are routinely denied. The Visa Waiver Program allows qualified citizens from 38 countries to avoid this process and with a quick online registration, obtain an electronic visa and admission into the United States for 90 days at a time.

This list of 38 countries changes often and usually only contains first-world countries that have low rates of people overstaying their visas, claiming asylum or otherwise abusing the visa process. Citizens from all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand and parts of East Asia enjoy the use of Visa Waiver admissions.

Why Every Criminal Defense Attorney in Florida should have a Trusted Immigration Attorney they can Talk to Anytime

Published on: January 7, 2016 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

Last month I had the honor of speaking at the Florida Public Defender Association’s 30th Annual “Trial with Style Conference” in unfortunately rainy Fort Lauderdale. While in one of my former lives as a state prosecutor and I like to think I always tried my cases with style, during this conference I did not talk about anything specifically to do with trying a case.

My topic was “Crimmigration: the intersection of Criminal and Immigration Law.” Let me preface this piece with the following caveat; not all immigrants are criminals (sorry Donald Trump) and recent research has shown that foreign-born residents are less likely to commit serious and violent crimes than native-born citizens.

That being said, this subject is of great interest to most criminal defense attorneys in Florida. Florida has the fourth-highest foreign-born population in the U.S. Almost 20% of all residents in Florida were born in another country. Because Florida is now the third largest state with a total population of over 20 million, that means we have roughly four million foreign-born people living in Florida. Florida is also top 10 in the country in crime rate. You combine all of these factors, and you see why criminal defense attorneys need to know immigration law.

Summaries of Recent Immigration-Related District Court Cases

Published on: December 10, 2015 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

Over the last few months I had the opportunity to work with some fantastic immigration attorneys across the Southeast United States on a collaborative project. Our goal was to find, review and summarize every immigration-related and useful District Court and Circuit Court Case from the Eleventh Circuit and put them together in a newsletter. This was an enjoyable and educational experience. We expect to send out this newsletter every quarter and it will contain published and unpublished District Court cases from Florida, Alabama and Georgia and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

This would not be possible without the hard work of our multi-state team composed of Marshall Cohen, Roberta Cooper, Bruce Buchanan and myself, John Gihon. Here are the summaries of the District Court Cases for Alabama, Georgia and Florida. If anyone reading this newsletter has any suggestions, please contact me at John@slgattorneys.com or our editor, Bruce Buchanan at bbuchanan@visalaw.com

District Court Decisions

Summaries of Recent Immigration-Related Circuit Court Cases

Published on: December 8, 2015 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

Over the last few months I had the opportunity to work with some fantastic immigration attorneys across the Southeast United States on a collaborative project. Our goal was to find, review and summarize every immigration-related and useful District Court and Circuit Court Case from the Eleventh Circuit and put them together in a newsletter. This was an enjoyable and educational experience. We expect to send out this newsletter every quarter and it will contain published and unpublished District Court cases from Florida, Alabama and Georgia and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

This would not be possible without the hard work of our multi-state team composed of Marshall Cohen, Roberta Cooper, Bruce Buchanan and myself, John Gihon. Here are the summaries of the 11th Circuit Cases. If anyone reading this newsletter has any suggestions, please contact me at John@slgattorneys.com or our editor, Bruce Buchanan at bbuchanan@visalaw.com

11th Circuit Cases:

Summaries of Recent Published Board of Immigration Appeals Decisions and More

Published on: November 16, 2015 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

Normally, I would begin with the BIA decisions and put the bonus case at the end, but this one is too important to miss. I blogged before about how the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), could be monumental in destroying the ordinary case analysis used by the Board in cases involving crimes of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 16(b). This case from the Ninth Circuit has proven me correct:

Dimaya v. Lynch, 2015 WL 6123546 (9th Cir. Oct. 19, 2015); In the first Federal Circuit Court published opinion of its kind, the Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. Supreme Court’s reasoning in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), is applicable in immigration cases. In Johnson (a federal criminal sentencing case) the U.S. Supreme Court found the residual clause of the ACCA and the corresponding ordinary case analysis unconstitutional and void for vagueness. The Ninth Circuit in Dimaya found that the problematic language and analysis in the ACCA is substantially the same as 18 U.S.C. § 16(b). Therefore, the ordinary case analysis and 18 U.S.C. § 16(b), suffer from the same constitutional defects brought to light in Johnson and are therefore void for vagueness. This means that we finally have a case to support the argument that the Immigration Courts cannot use 18 U.S.C. § 16(b) to sustain a crime of violence charge under INA § 101(a)(43)(F).

Recent Published BIA Decisions:

There is Bill Pending before the Florida Senate that Will Waste Tax Payer Money, and Unfairly Increase Criminal Penalties for Immigrants.

Published on: November 10, 2015 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

There is a bill currently pending before Florida Senate that seeks to increase the maximum punishment for certain crimes committed by “illegal immigrants.” You can read the text of Senate Bill 150 here:

http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2016/0150/BillText/__/HTML

Thankfully, there is no companion bill in the House. At first glance, many Floridians may think, “good, if someone is here illegally and commits a crime, they should face higher penalties.” But that gut reaction is wrong in this case, as the devil is always in the details. If you know anything about immigration law or have been following the protracted fights between the Obama administration and the federal courts over immigration, you know that the Federal Government and Federal Courts have a hard time interpreting and administering federal immigration laws themselves. What this bill proposes to do is to impose upon the Florida courts, prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys the additional time, financial and legal burden of determining the immigration status of a person before, during and after they commit a crime. This is much easier said then done.

Whether you are a Defendant in State or Federal Court, if you are not a U.S. Citizen, you need an Immigration Attorney Immediately.

Published on: November 5, 2015 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

Finding yourself in handcuffs and under arrest is a traumatic experience for everyone. Many thoughts run through your mind, where will they take me, will I be able to get out of jail, can I afford a criminal defense attorney? One thought that should also be at the forefront for everyone arrested who is not a U.S. citizen is, how will this arrest affect my immigration status and will I be deported?

For non-citizens who are arrested, hiring a criminal defense attorney is just the first step in protecting your rights. While criminal defense attorneys in both state and federal court are charged by the U.S. Constitution with providing accurate immigration advice to their clients, in reality, this often does not happen. Criminal defense attorneys are often unable to give accurate immigration advice because they do not practice immigration law and have no idea what the effects of a given criminal charge will be for a client.

This is true because the criminal aspects of immigration law, or crimmigration is a very nuisanced, complicated, ever-changing and inconsistent area of law that even the most experienced immigration attorneys are often fearful of practicing. If immigration attorneys don’t know the immigration consequences of criminal prosecutions, how can your criminal defense attorney be expected to know them?

How do I know if I’m a United States Citizen?

Published on: October 21, 2015 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

Seems like an easy question, right? You would think a person would know if they were a United States citizen as a matter of common sense. But sometimes it’s not that easy. If you have a United States citizen parent, either by birth or naturalization, you may have automatically acquired or derived U.S. citizenship and may not even know it.

A person can become a United States citizen any one of the following four ways: Constitutional citizenship, Acquired citizenship, Derivative citizenship, or Naturalization.

Constitutional citizenship – The fourteenth amendment of the United States Constitution states that “…all persons born in and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are citizens.” This means that anyone born on U.S. soil is a United States citizen, other than the children of diplomats not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

SLG Attorneys Speak at the 2015 AILA Central Florida Annual Conference

Published on: October 14, 2015 | by Lasnetski Gihon Law

This Friday and Saturday, October 16th & 17th, the Central Florida Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) will host its 2015 Annual Immigration Law Conference in Orlando. This conference will feature leading immigration experts from across the United States and a sitting U.S. Congressman. The venue is the beautiful Omni Champions Gate Resort.

SLG has the honor of having two of its partners, Jeremy Lasnetski and John Gihon, selected to be panelists at the conference.

Jeremy was chosen to be the discussion leader on the U.S. Citizenship and Naturalization panel. This panel will cover topics including the acquisition of citizenship by birth abroad, derivation of citizenship through a naturalizing parent and the requirements and procedure for naturalization.