US Immigration Laws and The Process

Alongside the abovementioned function, the Law also apprehends those held in violating the Immigration Law provisions, for instance, foreign citizens who protract their visit in the United States (HG. org). On legislation, the Federal Constitution mandates the Congress to frame Immigration laws which keep changing from time to time to accommodate the upsurge of immigration needs. These Immigration laws are found in Title 8 of the US Code as provided for the Federal Constitution. The Congress is also responsible for the framing of the Immigration and Nationality Act, commonly referred to as INA. In recent years, immigration laws have become stricter and more tangles over what is right and just have been the topical motions in Congress, making it harder and longer for legal immigrants to obtain citizenship. I believe that there should be a set deadline for Government to process and approve citizenship applications for Naturalization (“Redesigning the U.

S Naturalization Test: Interim Report”). Reportedly, the US encouraged and fully supported immigration during the mid 1700. However, this policy of open/free migration would be questioned in the late 19th Century when some States framed own immigration laws shortly after the Civil War-what would later conduce into the Supreme Court’s interposition…. Due to these variations, verification of US citizenship became difficult, making standardization of naturalization a major federal concern. To this ambit, the Congress was faced with another naturalization task-standardization of naturalization. Consequently, it created Naturalization Act of 1903, to normalize the naturalization procedures. In this regard, the Act established the “Federal Naturalization Service” that would supervise the issuing of American citizenship through naturalization by the relevant Courts (U. S. The Establishment of Quota System, 1924-was the first non-temporal law on quota that established border patrol.

US Refugee Policy, 1948-first US policy regarding refugees. Granted the Federal Government the reservation to admit refugees which saw over 200,000 refugees being admitted. Immigration and Nationality Act, 1952-consolidated all the previous immigration laws into one Statute. In its stipulation, it almost restricted the Eastern immigration while allowing the Western emigration. For this Immigration status, it takes one up to 5 years of residency to acquire US Citizenship. All the applications to this Immigration Category must be done directly to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) which works in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security, US Customs and Border Protection, DHS Office of Inspector General, US Department of State, etc. The Non-immigrant Visa Category: this Visa category allows non-US citizens to enter the United States temporarily for specific reasons which may range from pleasure to business (HG.

org). There is a miscellany of Visa types issued to individuals entering the US through this category, which is necessitated by reasons of their visit to the US. The process therefore, begins with your sponsor depositing, on your behalf, an I-130 petition with the USCIS. Once the USCIS approves your sponsor’s petition, the sponsor will be required to demonstrate adequate income/assets to facilitate the immigrant’s residency in the US. The sponsor will then legally declare his financial support to the immigrant by swearing an Affidavit of Support. From here, the intending immigrant will now begin the application process by filling the relevant immigration forms (Henriques and Schuster). However, for an intending immigrant based on Employment, he will need a US employer to sponsor his immigration to the US.

Once the intending immigrant’s application is approved, the relevant consulate will schedule an interview with the applicant. During the interview, if the consular officer determines the applicant is eligible for an immigrant visa, then digital fingerprint scans for the applicant will be taken. The applicant will then be advised on how to receive his Visa and relevant documents (Hampshire and Rizvi). Though the processing fees keep changing, the following are some of the charged fees: Immigration based on Family (Form I-130)-$535 Processing based on Approved Form I-130-$325 Employment based on Approved Form I-140 or I-526-$345 Other fees may be charged based on the status under this category for which one is applying e. g. First there is a regulation on the number of immigrants into the US per Country every fiscal year.

The regulation bars the Department of Homeland Security from admitting more than 7 percent of Visas to a given Country in a fiscal year. Reportedly, due to these strict regulations, no Country has reached this maximum percentage. On the Refugee limit, a legislation empowering the President to determine the Refugee ceiling was enacted in 1980 and Ronald Reagan set cap at 67,000 six years later. Since then, the Refugee number has never gone below this number. Chelsea House, 2009. American Immigration Council. How the United States Immigration System Works. American Immigration Council, 16 Aug.  2016, www. Center for Immigration Studies, 2010. Hampshire, David, and Sid Rizvi. Us Immigration Handbook: A Survival Handbook. Survival Books, 2010. Henriques, H S. html. How US Immigration Laws Have Evolved.  San Francisco Chronicle, 14 Jan.  2018, www. sfchronicle. “U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services” Implementation of the Kendell Frederick Citizenship Assistance Act.

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