Miller Mayer immigration attorney Steve Yale-Loehr was quoted by the New York Times in Lawyer and Son Ensnared Hundreds of Immigrants in Fraud Scheme (available by subscription). The article discusses a case in which, according to prosecutors, a lawyer and his son advised clients seeking green cards to sign petitions under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which enables undocumented immigrants who are victims of abuse to gain lawful permanent residence in the United States. Steve said he had never heard of someone using VAWA to conduct immigration fraud, but such fraud can be hard to root out. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If someone says, ‘I can guarantee you a green card if you just sign here,’ that’s a sure sign that something is funny.”
Steve was quoted by the Economist in America’s Immigration Policies Are Failing: A New Surge of Migration is Straining a Broken System and Might Cost Joe Biden the Election (available by subscription). The article notes that the immense wait for a court hearing, low chance of detention, and the prospect of work in the United States encourage migrants with a weak claim to cross the border and claim asylum. Prioritizing the most recent arrivals’ cases would reduce this incentive, Steve said.
Steve was quoted by the Boston Globe in Biden Has Been Giving Millions of Migrants False Hope; Desperate People Have Been Allowed Into the Country While They Apply for the Right to Stay, But Such Permission is Very Difficult to Obtain (available by subscription). He said that many migrants may “lose [their case for] asylum, either because they don’t have an attorney to represent them or they don’t have a strong case on the merits.” Coming from countries with difficult political circumstances isn’t enough to support an asylum claim, the article notes—asylum is granted based on persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. “It’s very hard to show that the persecution is well-founded based on one of those five characteristics,” he explained. In the meantime, the article suggests, a large number of migrants live in uncertainty. “That’s bad for our legal system, it’s bad for our economy, and it’s also bad for the migrants themselves,” Steve said. The article also quotes from a recent paper Steve co-authored that calls for expanding other legal pathways to the United States for migrants beyond asylum. “We cannot cut off all avenues to asylum, but we also cannot continue to accept applications from all who arrive, especially those with highly unlikely claims,” the paper says. Steve‘s white paper, Immigration Reform: A Path Forward, was featured in an eCornell podcast discussion, Three Ways to Reform Immigration Now.
Steve was quoted by the Chronicle of Higher Education in Why a Court Challenge to an Obscure Fisheries Regulation Could Upend Student Visa Policy (available by registration). The article discusses a pending Supreme Court case that may have implications for international students and institutions of higher education. He said, “Colleges and universities may think cases involving fisheries regulation have nothing to do with them, but what the Court decides will affect them one way or another.” He said the Supreme Court’s decision could have an impact on international-student policy in several ways: it could put any current legal challenges on hold until the fisheries cases are decided; it could change the federal government’s approach to rulemaking in progress, such as updates to the skilled worker visa program that affect both international students and foreign workers hired by colleges and universities; and if a new standard were applied retroactively, that would allow past policy disputes, like those affecting optional practical training, to be revisited in the courts.
Steve was quoted by CBS News in Biden Administration Has Admitted More Than 1 Million Migrants Into U.S. Under Parole Policy Congress is Considering Restricting. If Congress restricts parole, it would curtail a key presidential power, he said. “Every administration, Republican and Democratic, has used parole because in an emergency, like the Mariel boatlift or the Hungarian Revolution, you want to have something that allows you to bring in large groups of people to get them out of harm’s way. Every administration wants to have maximum flexibility and anything that the Republicans do to require restrictions on parole will hamper any future administration.”
Steve was quoted by the Daily Caller in Biden And Abbott Have Set the Stage for One of the Biggest State-Versus-Feds Immigration Fights in More Than a Decade. The article discusses Texas’s challenge to the role historically played by the federal government in immigration law enforcement and a related complaint filed by the Biden administration in the Supreme Court accusing Texas of overstepping its authority with anti-immigration measures. The Supreme Court previously ruled in favor of the federal government in an Arizona case, but it’s not clear whether the same will be true in the Texas case. “The question is now that we’ve got three different justices on the Supreme Court than were on the court on the Arizona case, will the current Supreme Court rule the same way? I suspect that Texas is hoping that with more conservative justices on the Supreme Court now, they might be able to come out with a different result than Arizona,” Steve said.
Steve co-authored Is Chevron Dead? Thoughts After Oral Arguments in Relentless, Inc. and Loper Bright Enterprises, published by Think Immigration.