Court: Ex-federal immigration lawyer can be sued for forgery
Legal Issues
A U.S. appeals court says a former federal immigration lawyer who forged a document in an effort to get a man deported can be sued for damages.
Jonathan M. Love was assistant chief counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle in 2009, when he forged a document purporting to show that Mexican immigrant Ignacio Lanuza had voluntarily agreed to be deported in 2000.
Lanuza later obtained a new attorney, who noticed the document was fake: Its letterhead said "U.S. Department of Homeland Security" — a federal agency that didn't exist in 2000.
Love was criminally prosecuted and sentenced to a month in prison in 2016. But U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman reluctantly dismissed Lanuza's civil claim against him. The judge said legal precedent barred the lawsuit.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision Tuesday. The panel called the forgery egregious.
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USCIS Will Begin Accepting CW-1 Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019
On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
Since USCIS expects to receive more petitions than the number of CW-1 visas available for FY 2019, USCIS may conduct a lottery to randomly select petitions and associated beneficiaries so that the cap is not exceeded. The lottery would give employers the fairest opportunity to request workers, particularly with the possibility of mail delays from the CNMI.
USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.