5. News from the Courts:

Supreme Court to review immigration law that favors children of US mothers, over US fathers

The Associated Press and The New York Times report that the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case addressing an obscure immigration law that applies only to children born outside of the US to parents, one of whom is a citizen of the US and one of whom isn’t. The current law makes it easier for children whose mother is a citizen to gain citizenship themselves, over one whose father is a citizen.

For people who were born before 1986, the US Citizen father must have spent 10 years in the United States, at least five of them after the age of 14. The law for US Citizen mothers declares that the mother must only be in the US for one continuous year before the birth of her child for the child to qualify.

In 1986, the law was changed so that the citizen fathers needed only to stay in the states for five years, only two of which had to be after the age of 14. In the case of Ruben Flores-Villar, his father was American, but had Ruben at age 16, and thus was unable to qualify under the law. Flores-Villar was charged with being in the country illegally in 2006, and was denied citizenship by US Immigration officials at the time. He is claiming sex-based discrimination exists in the law. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear Flores-Villar v. United States, No. 09-5801, after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, rejected Flores-Villar’s claim.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-us-supreme-court-citizenship,0,1646778.story

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/us/23scotus.html

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Minor drug cases, major trouble for immigrants

The New York Times is reporting about a case scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court dealing with immigrants facing minor drug convictions. Under current immigration law, two misdemeanor convictions for drug related crimes is considered, for the purposes of deportation of immigrants, the equivalent of drug trafficking, an “aggravated felony” that requires expulsion of said immigrant, without the option for consideration of individual circumstances or the seriousness and nature of the misdemeanor, and without considering outside factors including education, civic contribution, and family circumstances that may cause exceptional hardship on the family.

This interpretation of the law has been rejected by 4 of the judicial circuits, including New York, but has been upheld most notably by the 5^th Circuit, which oversees Texas and Louisiana, where a majority of these type of cases are heard. The government’s Board of Immigration Appeals rejects that interpretation of the law as well, but says it is bound by it, when deciding cases from the circuits where it prevails, including the Fifth Cicuit in Louisiana and Texas, and the Seventh Circuit, in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.

The Supreme Court will hear the case of Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, dealing with a longtime resident of Texas who was ordered to be deported to Texas for possession of marijuana and possession of a tablet of Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, illegal without a prescription.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/nyregion/31drug.html?hp

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