The election was less than a week ago, and already many are trying to use the results to argue that Comprehensive Immigration Reform ("CIR") now has a real chance of being passed because Republicans will be able to take credit for it. Despite such optimism, the contrary argument made by Raphael Sonenshein in the final two-and-a-half minutes of the below video is more likely the reality:
Indeed, while President Barack Obama is still taking the position that he
will implement CIR via executive order, the Republicans in the U.S. Congress continue to state that such unilateral
action by the President will have
severe political consequences. The President's taking executive action before the end of this year
may not appear as a rush because CIR has been debated for years, but the
move will nonetheless appear hasty in light of an incoming Republican
majority early next year.
Also rushed will be the below rundown of some of the latest published
decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ("Ninth
Circuit"), the federal appeals court that hears appeals from decisions
by U.S. District Courts within the Western States as well as hears petitions
for review from decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA")
regarding removal proceedings conducted within the Western States.
First, in
Nguyen v. Holder, the Ninth Circuit in August of this year found that a Vietnamese mandid commit what is termed a Crime Involving Moral Turpitude when he misused a passport to facilitate international terrorism but nevertheless
ordered the BIA to grant him deferral of removal under the Convention
Against Torture because of thelikelihood of his being tortured by the Vietnamese government upon his deportation.
Also in August of this year, the Ninth Circuit inBrown v. Holder found that an Indian man has
a Constitutional right to U.S. citizenship as a means of avoiding deportation if he could show that the former Immigration
and Naturalization Services ("INS") either arbitrarily and intentionally
obstructed his naturalization application or that INS was deliberately
indifferent to whether his application was processed.
Remaining in August of this year, the Ninth Circuit held in
Lai v. Holder that a Chinese man's raising of information, which was not inconsistent
to information he previously provided,
for the first time only during cross-examination regarding his asylum application could not be subjected to an adverse
credibility finding.
Finally, and finishing off the cases for August 2014 and thereby leaving
subsequent cases to subsequent posts, the Ninth Circuit held in
Singh v. Holder that being persecuted for multiple reasons, some of which may not be for
protected grounds while others are for protected grounds, does not render
one ineligible for asylum provided that at least one protected ground
formed at leastone central reason for the persecution.
Please forgive the rush, but as with the President, I am trying to catch
up before the end of the year.