Arizona Immigration Laws

By: Margaret Wong

Executive Action

Well, the executive action that we have now is one that’s just been expanded. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was for children that came to United States when they were less than (16), and initially they couldn’t be more than (31) to qualify.

DACA Expansion

Now it’s been expanded to include their parents, people that came to United States, had children here, they’re stuck here. We know who they are, but we’ve refused to give them a transition to work, or refused to give them driver licenses. We haven’t allowed them to integrate. Even though they came here illegally, the country has benefited by all the work that they’ve done. So the president realized that and said, well why don’t we help these people to get their drivers license. That way we document who they are. That way if you get involved in an accident, you know who was driving the car, rather than someone that you didn’t know who wouldn’t even speak the language that you understood.

Temporary Relief

So the executive action has expanded the scope of what we can do to give people work authorization, driver license, and Social Security numbers. Now this is not amnesty. Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) does not lead to permanent residency. It’s a temporary relief. This is a country of second chances. We give people relief to be able to move them to the next level. So it’s not amnesty. It’s just something that helps them to identify with us, move around, and work legally, and pay taxes. So actually, we benefit by this executive action. This is going to start– for the first one in February, 2014. Then the second one starts in May, and that’s the bigger one for the parents. We have children here that their parents have been in the United States for (25) years, and they still can drive. They can move around. Not only are we helping those parents, We’re also helping their children. whom they cannot take to work, take to school, take the doctor, take to the grocery store. So it’s a very welcome development.

By: Solomon Kanu

Criminal Law for Immigrants

The reason we do criminal law in conjunction with immigration law is that we found that a lot of our clients get into big trouble without even knowing what they were doing. If a foreigner was to be involved in a DUI or in an accident and someone is hurt or something, not only would they suffer the crime of they committed, immigration will show up at their door when they are done.

The same crime that a U.S. citizen will do and pay the price at the criminal justice level doesn’t end for a permanent resident or even someone that doesn’t have papers at all. Therefore, we consul t people on how they should live here. This is a good country, but it’s a country of law. There are so many things you can do and we don’t give excuses for people that don’t know the law. We consult people on what crimes can put them in removal proceedings. If they’re in removal proceeding, how we can consult the removal proceedings and get them back. But more importantly we ensure that they don’t go in there.

Cultural Differences

You can’t beat up your wife or your husband. These are things that could’ve been done in their home country with no consequences, but you can’t do that here. We don’t have two wives in United States. These are things that could happen in some other places, but this is not happening in United States. There are so many thing you can’t do here, so we consul people about those crimes and ensure that their stay in United States is good and is productive and to the extent that they obey the laws they’ll be welcome here.

By: Solomon Kanu

Hi, I’m Scott Bratton, I’m a partner at Margaret Wong & Associates. I’ve practiced immigration law for the past 13 years representing immigrants throughout the United States. I specialize in federal litigation, removal defense, and other complex issues involving immigration law. I’m the head of the Removal Defense and Litigation departments at Margaret Wong & Associates. I also teach immigration law at Cleveland State University.

I handle complicated immigration matters ranging from removal defense to federal litigation and adjustment of status and naturalization cases. Our firm represents immigrants throughout the United States in all aspects of other immigration cases. We passionately represent individuals in trying to help them obtain their dream of citizenship, non-immigrant status or lawful permanent resident status. If you have any questions, please contact me, and I’ll be happy to talk to you about your case.

By: Scott Bratton

Family Immigration

Family immigration is one of my favorite areas because it brings families together. It deals with parents filing for children, children filing for parents, spouses filing for each other, siblings filing for fellow siblings. In some situations, even step-parents filing for their children. It does bring families together.

Kanu & Associates

We’re very knowledgeable this area of immigration and we do this very well. If you’re thinking of coming to United States or you’re already in United States, you were even born in United States, but you want to bring your parent or your brother, your sister to United States, we will help you. That’s what we love to do. That’s what we have passion for. We’ve been successful in the past and we’ll help to bring the families together.

By: Solomon Kanu

By: Margaret Wong

Religious Visas

Religious visas are visas that are carved out exclusively for people that are engaged in religious work. So they could be pastors. They could be rabbis. They could be imams coming from outside of the United States to do religious work here.

Religious Visas for Pastors

We’ve been very successful in doing that for people in the Catholic and Anglican church. We bring pastors and religious workers from all over the place. We insure when they come here and do what they say they’re going to do. It gives me a lot of joy each time I’m able to help a pastor concentrate on their pastoral work, because it’s very very difficult to come in and not know what to do. So we help all these churches. We help some of the dioceses in United States to bring pastors from all over the world, put them where they’re supposed to be. Ensure that the transition from being a religious worker to permanent residence because you do need to stay two years before you can apply for permanent residency when you come in on a religious visa. So we moved in from religious visa to permanent residency and eventually to U.S. citizenship. So it gives me so much joy when we do that.

Religious Visa Lawyer

It is one of the areas that I do sometimes do for less than my normal price because I have a some kind of special interest in helping religious workers, pastors, and other people that do religious work. I would never forget one of the people we helped from Romania that does his chanting in the Orthodox church– in the Romanian Orthodox church. By the time we were done to when my office with flowers just to thank me for what I did. But I said, “Well I charged you money. Why are you paying me?” They said, “You don’t know what you did for us.” Our church would have fallen apart but for this man. So it gives me joy when this churches can stay together because the pastors or the rabbis are there.

By: Solomon Kanu

A lot of people see, whenever we do high profile cases, people say: “Oh, you’re just because they’re so famous. It’s easy.” or, “They’re so rich. It’s easy.” We also represented one of the richest man in Bolivia. You know the situation between Venezuela and Bolivia, the whole block of countries. We represent a lot of people from that part of the world. So it’s really fun and exciting, because when I was representing one of them, we heard the planes up there in the compound, because they all live in compounds. And I needed to get my client out of the country, and the planes were up there trying to arrest him. And I heard it, and it’s really scary. And I couldn’t be with my client, because I’m not there. And I couldn’t get into that soil, the foreign land. But these are all my cases that I really enjoyed, and it comes back and we have fun– now we can talk about it have fun with it. At that time it is scary. Or we have clients who got deported on the plane already. We have to stop the plane to get him out. Because once the plane leaves ground, you lose jurisdiction.

We recently have a client from a more communist-block country that, by the time his plane land into American soil at JFK, three officers from their country’s DC office embassy came to pick him up. And he didn’t have the American soil because he just landed from his country on land. He was picked up by them and luckily he had the smarts to pull the sleeve of the lady who works there, their air hostess, and the lady was smart enough to call the pilot, and the pilot came out and said, “What’s the problem?” So American immigration stopped him from being picked up by his own country national. By then the plane landed, and he was picked up and stopped in immigration jail. I had to fly to his jail and visit him and talk to his country embassy people who drove hours, and they were exhausted. It was midnight, and the American embassy people, to make sure he doesn’t get deported or excluded. So those are our fun cases. It’s scary at that time because, easily he could have been excluded from our soil and back to his home country. He’d probably be executed by now. So that case we won. It was really something. It was fun, yes. It’s great. It’s challenging.

By: Margaret Wong

By: Solomon Kanu