Board of Immigration Appeals Remanded One of Our Adam Walsh Cases Back to USCIS For Further Proceedings

Last month, our office received the decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals in an Adam Walsh Case. We argued to the Board that USCIS improperly imposed the "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Standard" in determining whether the petition poses a risk to the intended beneficiary. My contention was that this standard had no underlying basis as Congress never intended to require this criminal law threshold. In most immigration matters the standard is more probable than not.

In the decision, the Board specifically asked USCIS to explain 8 items in how they reached their conclusion to deny our client's I-130 visa petition. It is my belief that this is a milestone in adjudication of these petitions because the entire process has not be thoroughly thought through and the Board is asking USCIS to do so.

Board of Immigration Appeals Decision in Walsh Act Case

Facebook co-Founder, Eduardo Saverin, Renounces U.S. Citizenship to Avoid Paying Taxes

Facebook co-Founder, Eduardo Saverin, whose family fled from Brazil to the United States seeking asylum protection, has just renounced his U.S. citizenship to avoid paying approximately $600 million dollars in taxes from his expected windfall from the Facebook IPO. It seems the 1% again clearly demonstrate that they owe no obligations to the 99%. As someone who works in the trenches day in and day out, fighting for asylees fleeing from persecution around the globe, I am deeply saddened by someone who takes advantage of the largeness and generosity of the United States, and then absconds with the loot when it is not longer convenient for that person.

Here is the full story as reported.

When Eduardo Saverin was 13, his family discovered that his name had turned up on a list of victims to be kidnapped by Brazilian gangs. Saverin’s father was a wealthy businessman in São Paulo, and it was inevitable that he’d attract this kind of unwanted attention. Now the family had to make a permanent decision. They hastily arranged a move out of the country. And of all the places in the world they could move to, the Saverin family saw only one option. They took their talents to Miami.

Would it be too much to say that America saved Eduardo Saverin? Probably. Maybe that’s just too overwrought. The Saverins were just another in a long line of immigrants who’d come to America for the opportunity it affords—the opportunity, among other things, to not have to worry that your child will be kidnapped just because you’ve become wealthy.

Just because his parents moved here doesn’t mean Eduardo Saverin owes America anything, right?

Yet if you study the trajectory of Saverin’s life—the path that took him from being an immigrant kid to a Harvard student to an instant billionaire to the subject of an Oscar-winning motion picture—it emerges as a uniquely American story. At just about every step between his landing in Miami and his becoming a co-founder of Facebook, you find American institutions and inventions playing a significant part in his success.

Would Eduardo Saverin have been successful anywhere else? Maybe, but not as quickly, and not as spectacularly. It was only thanks to America—thanks to the American government’s direct and indirect investments in science and technology; thanks to the U.S. justice system; the relatively safe and fair investment climate made possible by that justice system; the education system that educated all of Facebook’s workers, and on and on—it was only thanks to all of this that you know anything at all about Eduardo Saverin today.

Now comes news that Saverin has decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship, most likely to avoid a large long-term tax bill on his winnings in the Facebook IPO. Saverin owns about 4 percent of Facebook stock. By renouncing his citizenship last fall, well in advance of the IPO, Saverin will pay an “exit tax” on his assets as they were valued then. But he’ll pay no tax on income derived from stock sales in the future—that’s because he now lives in Singapore, which has no capital gains tax. It’s unclear how much this move will save him, since it depends on how Facebook’s stock performs. But let’s say the value of his stock doubles over the long run, from an estimated $3.8 billion now to around $8 billion. If that happens, he won’t pay any tax on the $4 billion increase in value—which, at a 15 percent capital gains rate, will save him $600 million in taxes.

Is this fair? No. It’s worse than that, though. It’s ungrateful and it’s indecent. Saverin’s decision to decamp the U.S. suggests he’s got no idea how much America has helped him out.

So, to enlighten him, let’s list all the ways Eduardo Saverin has benefitted from America. First and most obviously, he lived a life of relative safety in Miami, something that wasn’t guaranteed for him in Brazil. Second, also obvious: If Saverin hadn’t come to America, he wouldn’t have met Mark Zuckerberg, and—not to put too fine a point on it—if Saverin hadn’t met Zuckerberg, Saverin wouldn’t be Saverin.

Third: Harvard. Zuckerberg and his cofounders met in the dorms, and while Harvard is a nominally private institution, it enjoys significant funding and protections from the government. In 2011, Harvard received $686 million, about 18 percent of its operating revenue, from federal grants; that’s almost as much as it received from student tuition.

Would Facebook have been founded without Harvard? Perhaps—maybe Facebook would have come about wherever Zuck went to school. Still, there were social networks at lots of other schools. There was clearly something about Harvard’s student body that was receptive to Facebook. More generally, elite, government-sponsored American universities like Harvard have been instrumental in the founding of many tech giants. Microsoft’s founders met at Harvard. Yahoo and Google’s founders met at Stanford. But even if you believe that these universities shouldn’t claim credit for the companies they brought about, it’s still hard to argue that Facebook would be where it is today without the American taxpayers’ large investment in public education. Facebook depends on really smart people to make its products. You don’t get smart people without tax dollars.

Fourth: The American government’s creation of the Internet. The strangest thing about Silicon Valley’s libertarian politics is how few people here recognize how the Internet came about. ARPANET, the earliest large-scale computer network that morphed into the Internet, was funded by the U.S. Defense Department, as was the research into fundamental technologies like packet switching and TCP/IP. Delve deeper into the network and you get to the microprocessors that run the world’s computers—another technology that wouldn’t have come about by loads of federal research grants.

Even the Web itself can trace its founding to government grants. Tim Berners-Lee worked at CERN, the research group funded by Europeans governments, when he worked on the HTTP protocol. Marc Andreessen worked at National Center for Supercomputing Applications—which is funded by in a partnership between the federal government and the state of Illinois—when he created the Mosaic Web browser. Then you’ve got GPS, a technology that makes much of the mobile revolution possible, and one that is wholly created and operated by the U.S. government.

Fifth: The judicial system. If it weren’t for the U.S. courts and laws, Saverin might have been permanently shut out of Facebook. But in 2009, he settled a lawsuit with Facebook that gave him credit as a co-founder and his current stake in the firm. In other words, it’s only because Saverin could sue Facebook and depend on a relatively fair judicial system that he’s got the billions on which he’s now skirting taxes.

Fair courts aren’t to be taken for granted, by the way. There are many places in the world where, if you are wronged by a billionaire, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. One of those places is Brazil; according to Transparency International, the courts in Saverin’s birth country are beset by corruption.

Now, none of this is to discount Saverin’s own contributions to Facebook’s success. Though he was only there at the beginning—and although he had some pretty terrible ideas for Facebook, including his plan to show interstitial ads when you went to add a friend—let’s assume that he did in fact add $4 billion of value to the world.

The question is, what’s fair for him to keep?

As a son of immigrants myself, I’ve got no patience for the argument that he should keep all of it. Pretty much everything in my life that I enjoy wouldn’t have happened without my being born in the United States. My education, my job, my wife and family, the fact that I’m not persecuted for my race or religion (my parents fled from the war-torn aftermath of WWII), the fact that I can sometimes forget to lock my doors at night and not end up killed by marauding bands—I hate paying taxes as much as the next guy, but when I think about all the ways that the United States has been integral to everything in my life, taxes seem like a tiny price.

Now, remember that the tax rate on long-term capital gains is only 15 percent. In other words, Saverin gets to keep 85 percent of everything he’s making from Facebook’s IPO. Given how much of his wealth depends on the government, that’s more than fair.

New Report Released by Pew Foundation Cites Net Zero Migration from Mexico

According to a just released report from the Pew Foundation Hispanic Center, the net migration from Mexico has fallen to zero, meaning the largest immigration boom in the history of the United States may have just ended.

The Mexican migration has been one of the largest in the nation’s history. About 12 million Mexicans have crossed the border, more than half illegally. That flow not only stopped but may have actually have begun to reverse, an equally historic shift. The report found that from 2005 to 2010, “about 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States and about 1.4 million Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children moved from the United States to Mexico.” The drop is the first of any significance in more than two decades. There are 40 million immigrants in the U.S. today. Mexicans account for 58 percent of the illegal population and 30 percent of all U.S. immigrants. China is the next largest country of origin, but accounts for only 5 percent of the total number of immigrants.

2012 Pew Hispanic Center Report

Shocking New Video About Homicide at US Mexico Border

Just saw this video clip on Youtube that was quite shocking. I am not easily shocked by police violence, but this seems to be an egregious case by the US Border Patrol.

Here is the Link

Wow.

Major Win in Washington State - Mexican National Granted Withholding Relief

Our office had a major win last week. In an individual merits hearing in Washington State, our client, a Mexican National, was granted withholding relief by the Immigration Judge and the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel waived the appeal for the government. Our client, after spending almost 15 months in custody was released the next day.

A little background on the case, our client was an elected major of a small town in Mexico. He was trained as a lawyer and he won the election on a promise to clean up the town. Once in office, he had several thugs arrested when they disrupted a celebration and festival in the town. They were immediately released and came back to kidnap our client, held him for several days, and took him into the desert where they released him and threatened him with death if they ever saw him again.

He first was stopped at the border, where he was deported back to Mexico by the US Border Patrol. He entered the US on his second try and was later arrested in California during a traffic stop and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Because our client was previously ordered deported, he was not eligible for asylum protection and he was held under mandatory detention by immigration officials.

The immigration case had a previous individual hearing, which was conducted by local attorney in Washington State and our client was ordered deported. In the decision, the IJ did not find the requisite nexus between the persecution and one of the protected enumerated grounds, e.g., race, religion, nationality, political opinion, of membership in a particular social group.

I handled the case on appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals and won a remand where the Board ruled in our favor, holding that the IJ erred in this nexus determination.

The deportation case was again set for another Individual Merits Hearing, which was held last week. Mr. Ballout flew up to Washington State and conducted the hearing, which ended successfully. Not many Mexican Nationals obtain asylum, withholding relief in this country and this was one huge victory.

Osama bin Laden's Widows Are Illegal Aliens in Pakistan

In a cruel twist of irony, the three widows of the once most-wanted man on Earth, Osama bin Laden, have been charged with being illegal aliens.

Pakistan has charged Osama bin Laden's three widows with illegally entering and living in the country, the interior minister said Thursday.

The three women have been in Pakistani detention since May last year, when U.S. commandos raided the house where they, bin Laden and several of their children were staying. The commandos shot and killed bin Laden, and then buried his body at sea.

Rehman said the three had been charged in court, but he did not say when. It was unclear if they had a lawyer.

He said their children were free to leave Pakistan, but could stay with their mothers for the duration of the trial.

A Pakistani legal expert contacted about the case, Hashmat Habib, said the maximum punishment the women could receive was five years in jail. One of their relatives has reportedly visited Pakistan recently to urge authorities to let them leave the country. The decision to charge them could be a formal part of that process.

One of the women is known to be from Yemen, another from Saudi Arabia. The nationality of the third woman is unclear.

Bin Laden, the subject of a massive international manhunt, had been living in the Pakistani army town of Abbottabad for around five years before the CIA traced his whereabouts. The unilateral American raid humiliated and angered the Pakistani army, which has also faced uncomfortable questions over why it wasn't aware of bin Laden's presence.

A government commission is investigating the affair, but few expect it to come up with many answers. Its members have interviewed the wives. Last month, the government destroyed the three-story compound the bin Laden clan was living in, removing a concrete reminder of the country's association with the world's most wanted man.

USCIS Issues Proposed New Rules Governing I-601 Hardship Waiver Petitions for Immediate Realtives

I have received numerous phone calls over the last few weeks regarding the publicity surrounding the announcement from Homeland Security and their proposed new rules governing the pre-adjudication of I-601 Hardship Waiver petitions and the granting of provisional waivers if the requirements are met.

What is critical to understand at the moment is that this is merely a notice of a proposed rule change and it will not take effect until it is approved and incorporated into the CFR's. (Code of Federal Regulations). Please find a link to the entire publication below.

Also, the proposal explicitly states "USCIS would grant a provisional waiver if the alien meets the eligibility requirements described in this Notice . . The provisional waiver, however, would not become effective unless and until the alien departs from the United States."

DHS Proposed Rules on Hardship Waivers