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Consular officers permanently bar more visa applicants every year for “alien smuggling” than any other provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act except misrepresentation. In 2012 alone, consular officers invoked the alien smuggling provision of the INA, Section 212(a)(6)(E), more than 6,000 times, an increase of more than 20% from the year before. What are the standards for a finding of alien smuggling, and what categories of people have been subject to this provision of the INA? A consular officer can make an alien smuggling finding if he or she decides that a visa applicant has, at any time, knowingly “encouraged, induced, assisted, abetted or aided…” another alien “to enter or try to enter the United States” in violation of law. The Immigration Act of 1990 abolished the “for gain” requirement, so a consular officer does not need to find that the applicant had a profit motive or received money…

Let’s say you had a run-in with the law a long time ago. As a result, you were convicted of fraud. But it happened so long ago that you do not give much thought to it. So when you applied for a visa a few years back to visit your daughter and her children in the US, you did not indicate the conviction in the visa application form. You received the visa and used it to go to the US several times. You didn’t give much thought to it, until you decided to immigrate with your daughter’s help, and you had to obtain a police certificate. The police certificate indicated the conviction, but you were not worried because you had consulted a lawyer, who told you that although the conviction was for a crime of moral turpitude and did not qualify for the petty offense exception, a waiver was available….

Many immigrant visa applicants are under the mistaken impression that they are not allowed to challenge a negative visa decision by a consular officer. In fact, every applicant for an immigrant visa has a right to submit a Request for Reconsideration of an immigrant visa denial. While technically this is not an appeal, a Request for Reconsideration does give the applicant the right to submit new evidence or arguments to challenge a visa refusal. A consular officer must review such a formal Request; this is an obligation, one that the consular officer cannot shirk. This obligation is set out in the Department of State’s own regulations, and an appeals court recently confirmed that this is the consular officer’s duty, punching a hole in the armor of the consular nonreviewability doctrine. However, there is a time limit on the submission of the RFR: it must be submitted within one year of…

Via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, I was able to obtain visa statistics (221gMoscowstats0001) for the US Embassy in Moscow. Russian visa applicants are no exception to the epidemic of 221(g) decisions around the world. From 2007–2012, the number of Russian B visa applicants at the US Embassy in Moscow subject to 221(g) more than tripled. Students and employees of US companies also had their applications increasingly scrutinized: the number of students and H applicants subject to delays more than doubled, and the number of L visa applicants encountering 221(g) increased more than eightfold! The good news is that the overwhelming majority of Russian applicants subject to Section 221(g) receive their visas. However, the spike in the number of 221(g) delays and bureaucratic hurdles encountered by Russian visa applicants contradicts the public Embassy pronouncements about facilitating travel to the US. If you are the subject of a substantial 221(g) delay,…

The phone calls keep coming in to our office. From Australia, South Africa, India, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Russia, Lebanon, all from US visa holders who have had their visas revoked without explanation. It appears that the US government has intensified its visa revocation campaign, particularly against Muslims. The problems encountered by Muslims in dealing with US immigration authorities was the topic of a recently published ACLU report about the discriminatory USCIS Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (“CARRP”). The report highlights how USCIS misidentifies national security concerns; encourages FBI interference and harassment; mandates pretextual denials; and deprives due process of green-card holding applicants, primarily Muslim, during the naturalization process. These thousands are left in legal limbo for years. If there is one glimmer of hope, it is that these applicants at least are able to wage their battles while in the US, where lawyers, courts, and public opinion can at…