Immigration Lawyer Hopeful for 2010

Added: (Mon Mar 01 2010)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Houston-area immigration lawyer Annie Banerjee assesses the past decade from an immigrant’s perspective.

From the perspective of immigration law, the decade has been on a descending arc. “It started out with a bang, but it’s definitely ending with a whimper,” said Annie Banerjee, a Houston-area immigration lawyer. She perceives politics and the economy as seminal influences in the arena of immigration law. The decade began with the dot com boom and the signing of the AC-21 bill easing numerous provisions of business immigration law, including the ability to port petitions from different employers, and an increase of H-1B numbers to 195,000. Yet even before the ink dried on the bill, the grisly events of September 11, 2001, drastically altered reality for every American. Immigration law was victimized by the harsher climate as well. “For instance, although always filled prior to the end of the CIS fiscal year, the H-1B quota reverted back to the original 65,000, never to be increased again,” Banerjee said.

During the reactive Bush Administration’s eight year tenure, not a single immigration measure was passed. “As immigration attorneys, we were spared having to put to mind anything new, except for a procedural change in the filing of the PERM,” asserted Banerjee.

In recent years, occasional buzz was created by ambiguous terms such as “comprehensive immigration reform” with a relatively recent bi-partisan U.S. Senate bill co-sponsored by John McCain (R-Arizona) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) being much discussed. But this legislation never mustered the votes to pass, being relegated eventually to oblivion like several other measures which had attracted less notoriety. “Another notable measure were the so-called ‘Dream Acts’ legalizing college grads who were brought to the United States as little children by their parents illegally,” explained Banerjee, “These promising students are illegal through no fault of their own, studied here, went to college here, but cannot work legally.”

Kennedy has since died, and although McCain is alive, he’s not President as he’d hoped. The great recession which has been stifling American hopes and dreams since December 2007 is slow to abate. Pray tell, what does the future hold from the perspective of immigration law?

“Hopefully, we are about to begin a brave new decade,” Banerjee concluded.