NEWS BYTES

At the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference last week, officials from the Department of Labor said that about 235,000 labor certification applications were received by April 30, 2001, the section 245(i) deadline.  With the 65,000 cases that were already pending before the renewal of section 245(i), there are now about 300,000 pending applications for labor certifications.  It is estimated that about 60,000 of the section 245(i) cases came from California, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Texas.

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Also at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference, representatives from the State Department provided the latest processing times for J-1 waiver applications.  Interested government agency waivers are taking four to six weeks, hardship and persecution based waivers are taking 90 to 120 days, and no objection letter based waivers are taking 60 to 90 days.  Responses to advisory opinions are being issued in four to six weeks. 

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The issue of an amnesty for undocumented immigrants in the US has become a topic in the New York City mayoral race.  A Democratic candidate, Fernando Ferrer, currently the president of the Bronx borough, said he supported such an amnesty.  Soon thereafter, the leading Republican candidate, businessman Michael Bloomberg, said that city and state politicians should not comment on the issue since immigration is exclusively a federal concern. 

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Four former police officers in a small town in Alabama have pled guilty to civil rights violations.  They admitted that they stopped Hispanics for traffic violations and would then rob them.  Officials believe they targeted Hispanics thinking that their immigration status would prevent them from going to authorities.  The four face up to 10 years in prison and fines of 0,000, but because they pled guilty they will likely receive lesser sentences. 

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The US is accepting far fewer refugees annually than authorized by Congress and the White House, even though the number of refugees in the world is increasing dramatically.  Last year, the US was authorized to accept 90,000 refugees, but accepted only 72,515.  Since 1990, it is estimated, the US has accepted 117,000 fewer refugees than authorized. 

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A Louisiana lawyer and another area woman have admitted participation in a fraudulent scheme to bring Russian babies to the US for adoption.  The two paid pregnant Russian women to come to the US to have their babies and put them up for adoption. 

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Two officials in a prosecutor’s office in Belarus have been granted refugee status in the US.  They claimed that they faced persecution after revealing that the office had organized a death squad to deal with political opponents. 

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Following the results of a biannual audit of the INS, the agency is considering asking Congress to allow it to increase the fees it charges.  The INS has not said by how much it would like to increase fees, which were last raised in 1998 and 1999.  Sources say that the fees for green card applications could increase from 0 to 0 and fees for naturalization applications from 5 to 5.

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At least 539 Chinese immigrants have fallen victim to a scam in Flushing, NY through the owner of the Chinese firm, Kaitong Inc., Ding Gang Xie. According to receipts and contracts provided by the victims, customers paid him between ,000 and ,500 in exchange for contacts promising that their relatives would be rushed through the application process and get B-1 or F-1 visas in three months. However, they found an empty office in Flushing when they went to visit to Mr. Xie.

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A law passed last year orders INS officials to report by January 15 the extent of the agency's case backlog and how the INS plans to take care of it. However, the Department of Justice is five months late in informing Congress of the size of the citizenship application backlog. The INS has not yet written a formal report, but they did release their most recent backlog figures. At the end of April, the naturalization backlog was nearly 700,000 compared to a 3.2 million backlog for all other applications, and the average green-card wait is about 16 months. 

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The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, reversing a previous ruling, granted Zhang Hongbao, founder of the Zhong Gong sect in China, political asylum, ending his seven-year exile. Zhang was forced to flee China for Southeast Asia in 1994 after Beijing cracked down on the sect and its members. Zhong Gong has been banned in China because it is an “evil cult,” accused of “using feudal superstition to deceive the masses.” 

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In March of this year, two Los Angeles residents, Alexander Rashkovski and his wife, Nataliya Kozlova, were convicted of nine federal smuggling counts. After the trial, Kozlova was released on a ,000 bond to await her sentencing, but fled in mid-May. Rashkovski was also released after the trial, but his ,000 bind was revoked after he violated the terms of his release. Rashkovski was detained in August 1999 at the San Ysidro border crossing while trying to drive into the U.S. with two of the women he was convicted of smuggling. The couple was also convicted of smuggling a third woman from Russia to Los Angeles. The three women testified that the couple arranged their trips from Russia to Mexico and then to San Diego, and that the three of them were expected to pay their smuggling fees by working as prostitutes once in Los Angeles. On June 14, Rashkovski was sentenced to five years in prison for arranging for the smuggling.