But here is where it gets hard. When my wife applies for immigrant status and a green card, known as "Adjustment of Status" or AOS, she has to send her passport and visa in to the government where they may have it for many months. So if we live in Arizona, does that mean she has to be like a prisoner on house arrest? Yes. And that is where this very flawed law hurts legal immigrants, who we should be applauding and helping while stopping illegal immigration.
Obviously this law was written by politicians who know nothing about immigration law, which is why it is best to have such laws written by a federal immigration committee that does.
Nik , as I was talking to my Cousin who's a Sheriff here in Palmdale , I told him this . Why does the Motor Vehicle Dept. not issue on each Driver's Lic. what the status of each is . It holds an aweful lot of info in the back of each Card . Almost everybody has a Lic . here in the States and this would make it easy to check .. say after a Traffic Stop or any Illegal activity that causes them to check . This could be in full swing in all States maybe by next year or two . These Lic.'s are going to be hard if not impossible to copied illegally . So anyone with this Lic. , should not have to worry about anything or get upset being ask for it .. unless they have something to hide . People with no such Lic. , can expect to be ask more question's at the Station for more proof . No Paper's .. back to the Homeland wherever that may be .
ReplyDeleteThink , why do we go through all this trouble with the paperwork/expense , when they can just come here and can stay as long as they want and take somebody's Job .. especially now .
So why would Citizen's complain about this Law , unless they are doing something under the Table ? Why would I get upset , showing my Proof ? I have nothing to hide and the ones that do need to be seperated and taken care of , if we ever going to solve this problem .
But what of those that do not have a drivers license. I currently know of many Chinese here in Texas that do not. My big issue is just during adjustment of status when immigrants do not have their passport and a copy will not suffice for the Arizona law. What are they to do?
ReplyDeleteThose of course without a Lic. need other Proof ...
ReplyDelete( Visa's/Passport )to show up to date Paper's .
Persons that come here and need to send away their Passport and Green Card , still have their S.S. Card which Qing received with the Green Card the same day . This alone will show , she's here with Paper's .
My wife is here on a K3, so she does not have a SSN. She will get that with her green card after we send away her passport & such for adjustment of status. In Texas you need a SSN to get a D.L., even though Federal law says otherwise. LOL!
ReplyDeleteI can not see , under those circumstances that A Copy of the Passport and Visa will NOT be enough . That defeat's there own Rule/Law of the Immigration Dept.and the Government as a whole . They must have some kind of Document to give you in it's place til the Passport comes back . It should not matter what State you're in . I see your point Nik , I couldn't keep my Wife locked up for the time waiting .
ReplyDeleteYeah a copy should be enough, so the Arizona law needs to be edited to allow this.
ReplyDeleteI don't think your wife would be the target of any of the problems in Arizona. I mean, let's be frank, they are looking for "over the border" immigrants, i.e. anybody who looks Latino, or might be speaking a little too much Spanish. I hate to say it, but a lot of problem is that many people lump all Latinos together. I guess you could call it the Vaughn Ward syndrome. When they see Latinos they see Peruvian Mexicans, Puerto Rican Mexicans, etc. it's all the same thing, no? Followed with the usual apathetic, "I don't really care what they are." This apathy extends to not caring if the people involved and/or racially targeted ARE actually US citizens or not. Makes me want to sing a Lou Reed song, "Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor..."
ReplyDeleteWell, I cannot speak to the Arizona law specifically, but my wife and I live in Alabama and she has been in the US since July 2009. She came to the US on a tourist visa (we got tired of waiting on the K3, and since she had had two US tourist visas before, they gave her a third one with no problems). She was able to get a Driver's License almost immediately, and received her work permit and SSN about 2 months after we filed for Adjustment of Status. No problems whatsoever during the AOS period. She received her green card about 5 months after filing the AOS. She always carries a photocopy of her green card with her in her wallet.
ReplyDeleteThe ONLY time we have ever had an issue with this was when we went to Big Bend National Park in west Texas, which is on the Mexican border. They have Immigration checkpoints set up on the way out of the park. We had to declare her as a non-US citizen, and by a stroke of bad luck, we had forgotten to bring either her green card or the photocopy. However, she did have her Driver's License with her. The ICE agent took her license to run it against the computer, came back five minutes later and let us go, warning us to carry the Green Card when near the border in the future. So if you are following law and have the proper registration somewhere, you will usually have no problem. Even if you do get taken into the station for not having your papers with you, do you have any idea how long the deportation process takes? It can take months to go through immigration court. Surely you can send your husband or friend home to grab your papers in that time?
Have you read the Arizona immigration law? I did, about a year ago when all this started going down. The law is about 20 pages long. The key point is though, it's already an existing law. The amendments to the existing law, which is what is causing a fuss, constitutes about 3/4 of a page. The law allows a law officer to check someone's immigration status only if they are engaged in a legal incident (speeding, committing a crime, working for an employer that ICE is raiding, or looking to engage work as a day laborer). So how would this law apply to a foreigner in the AOS period who doesn't have a driver's license or a work permit? Besides all that, if the police even think about deporting you, they're going to check the USCIS database. If you're in the AOS period, you'll be in there.