Immigration 101

The immigration laws and regulations provide some avenues to apply for lawful status from within the U.S. or to seek relief from deportation.  The eligibility requirements for these benefits and relief can be stringent, and the immigration agencies often adopt overly restrictive interpretations of the requirements.  Learn about advocacy and litigation that has been and can be undertaken to ensure that noncitizens have a fair chance to apply for the benefits and relief for which they are eligible.  

Recent Features

All Immigration 101 Content

October 9, 2019

President Trump invoked the same legal authority used for the Travel Ban to impose a sweeping new ban on legal immigration last week. Under the new ban, which analysis suggests could block as much...

September 25, 2019

The mass deportation of immigrants from the United States under the Secure Communities program has had no appreciable impact on local crime rates. Why? Because most of the immigrants being...

September 23, 2019

In the Trump administration’s rush to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, 22 archaeological sites could be damaged or entirely destroyed. This warning comes from an internal National Park...

September 13, 2019

The Trump administration is considering decreasing the maximum number of refugees accepted into the United States to 10,000 and as possibly low as zero, administration officials confirmed last...

September 5, 2019

The U.S. economy is changing—and immigration can play a major role in how it looks in the future. But how immigration shapes the future of the U.S. economy and its workforce is dependent on a...

September 3, 2019

Iraqi interpreters who risked their lives to work with the American military have been effectively shut out from obtaining the special U.S. visa they were promised. The Trump administration issued...

August 23, 2019

Short-term thinking is inferior to long-term thinking, some argue, because it does a disservice to the future and those who will live it.  Two long-term thinkers who have profoundly impacted U.S....

August 13, 2019

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published the final version of its new “public charge” regulation on Monday morning. The rule would make it easier for the government to deny a green card...

August 7, 2019

El Paso, Texas suffered a horrific tragedy on Saturday when a gunman entered a local Walmart and opened fire. The gunman—who was emboldened by racist rhetoric to specifically target immigrants and...

August 5, 2019

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it is ending a family reunification program for Filipino World War II veterans. This places a needless burden on our country’s veterans, many of...

Publication Date: 
September 30, 2020
This report identifies disruptions throughout the immigration system because of the COVID-19 pandemic and makes recommendations for improvements to the federal government’s response.
September 25, 2020

The American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, through their joint initiative, the Immigration Justice Campaign, submitted this comment in opposition to...

September 23, 2020

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a fierce champion of progressive rights and the second woman to serve as a Supreme Court Justice, died on Sept. 18, 2020. Long recognized as a staunch advocate for women’s...

September 22, 2020

The Trump administration continues to express belief that the coronavirus “will go away”—but the U.S. State Department does not seem to agree. In a recent memo signed by Secretary of State Mike...

September 21, 2020
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States and champion of fairness and equality, died Friday in Washington, DC. The following statement is from Beth Werlin, executive director of the American Immigration Council:
September 15, 2020
This new rule will increase the total number of people who are required to submit biometric data from 3.9 million currently to 6.07 million—an increase of more than 60%.
September 10, 2020

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants might be prevented from voting in the 2020 election—even though they are just one step away from becoming new Americans. Years of fiscal mismanagement at U.S....

September 8, 2020

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to resume issuing diversity visas on September 5. Each year, the State Department uses a lottery system to select visa recipients from a broad...

August 31, 2020

The United States Postal Service (USPS) will play an outsized role in the 2020 presidential election, as more states focus on mail-in voting to help curb the spread of the coronavirus at polling...

August 26, 2020

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) told Congress in May that it was running out of money and would need a $1.2 billion bailout to maintain its operations without major disruptions....

Most Read

  • Publications
  • Blog Posts
  • Past:
  • Trending