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I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

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Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#101
post #40

So, I have a wife who just got her citizenship. We're very happy about that. Concerning, though, is the current presidential administration's talk of trying to do large-scale denaturalization of citizens. I know you don't have the ability to read minds, but would you care to hazard a guess to much of this is the president just blowing smokes or how worried I should be?

(Not Peter, not a lawyer)

It is hard not to be moderately worried, since the administration has already made concrete attacks on citizenship pathways, immigrants and legal residents. Most notably, it's targeted birthright citizenship via executive order, tried to push through the power to unilaterally revoke green cards, and arbitrarily cancelling the ability of universities to host foreign students.

More importantly, successful legal challenges to these efforts are being vacated or reversed by the Supreme Court. That means the administration's attempts aren't being fully checked by balances.

You should take the rhetoric fairly seriously. There is no good-faith explanation for this pattern of attacking people who have gone through the process faithfully, and no credible ongoing efforts to prevent those happening.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#102

Hi Peter, when i went to Hacker news this morning and saw this post i thought, that's a bit unusual, an attorney??, so i think its cool that an immigration attorney visits channels like this. Anyways, me and my soon to be wife (we get married next Friday) have consulted an immigration lawyer regarding my status, i overstayed my tourist visa, so now im out of status, the lawyer mentioned that i have a pretty good chan…

Not a lawyer, but this is similar to my situation.

I personally would not delay. It will be awhile before you get to the interview stage so you also have that time to show your relationship is genuine and collect proof of a life together.

I don't know of a list; but my wife and I had things like:

  - wedding photos!
  - mobile phone family plan
  - joint tax filings
  - sample of letters/postcards sent to us (separate and together) at same address 
    (xmas cards etc. and even some junk mail)
  - name on utilities
  - photos at different events, weddings, birthdays, sports, etc.
We didn't need most of it in the end but you never know - and this was over 15 years ago.

Congrats!

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#103
I'm on a L1B and my labor market test just failed for the PERM process.

I found my job ad on LinkedIn and it had over 300 applications within a few days of going live.

I have a suspicion that due to the ATS we use for our company it showed the job application on many different channels unnecessarily.

What do you suggest I do next?

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#104
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you recommend for foreign born US citizens worried about being approached by ICE? What are the basic ground rules for interacting? For example, some of us here look very much like we didnt grow up in an Iowa cornfield and have genuine concern that one negative interaction is going to result in being roughed up by untrained ICE agents at best and tossed into jail or worse. Do we just get used to the idea of…

Carry a REAL-ID enabled state ID? Those are not available to illegals in any state. All newer state IDs AFAIK are REAL-ID enabled by default. And you probably will need to use some form of ID anyway pretty frequently.

[deleted]

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#106
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-entry permit is granted for 2 years and the only requirement is that you apply for it while in country. Usual processing time nowadays is around a year so in effect you need to apply once every 3 years for it. They have the option of sending it to a us embassy abroad for pick up but we have always had it sent to a friends address in US and picked it up while visiting US.

You didn't have any issues re-entering the US prior to picking up the permit from your friend's address?

Thanks for sharing your experience. A year is a very long time..I am also curious about the pickup options and address.

My partner will be updating their address to have mail sent to a family member’s address in the US, but we will also be living in a country that has a US embassy easily accessible.

My partner is Mexican, so as you can imagine, they almost always have awful experiences with immigration in the US.

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#107
post #100
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can also put you in jail for up to 30 days if they're feeling like it. Seems crazy to me but also perfectly legal for them to do.

There are a lot of things that are "perfectly legal" to do. Doesn't mean that, in practice, law enforcement would necessarily take the most extreme legal action possible. This is a new development (well, new-ish for many communities... I imagine predominatly-black communities have always experience this) whereby LE is explicitly instructed to look for any legal course of action to punitively enforce the law (rather t…

> Only if they are in a paranoid state whereby LE maliciously enforces the law for any minor violation and enforces overwhelming (often illegal) responses to these infractions.

ICE operates in every state. e.g. US citizens are being jailed in California (https://apnews.com/article/us-army-veteran-immigration-raid-...)

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#108
Hey Peter,

I'm still waiting for my family based GC to be approved. It was applied for in March 2023.

I've tried contacting my senators to see if it can be expedited but USCIS replied to say that it's still within "normal processing times" and that there is not yet an immigrant number available as my priority date is not earlier than the final action date.

I've been keeping a close eye on the USCIS Visa Bulletin final action dates and have noticed that they don't always move forward each month. I.e. there has been no change between July and August: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

Is this normal? Or due to the current administration?

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#109
post #73

Hi Peter - do you have any specific thoughts for people posting about immigration scenarios here, to help keep themselves safe? Given that it was recently revealed that ICE is monitoring these comments.[0][1] [0] https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-co... [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VyAaJaWCutyJyMiTXuDH...

(not peter) It is absolutely wild that people are posting about the ways that they have broken the letter of immigration law on here using their regular accounts and identifiable IP addresses.

Serious question, does anyone actually care about immigration law at this point? Because on the surface it doesn't seem to matter if you followed the law exactly or you completely ignored it if you're someone targeted by ICE. They seem to find their target and then work backwards on how to deport them. Is anyone who wouldn't normally be in the sights of an ICE agent getting targeted by some HN comment?

Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

#110
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you recommend for foreign born US citizens worried about being approached by ICE? What are the basic ground rules for interacting? For example, some of us here look very much like we didnt grow up in an Iowa cornfield and have genuine concern that one negative interaction is going to result in being roughed up by untrained ICE agents at best and tossed into jail or worse. Do we just get used to the idea of…

Carry a REAL-ID enabled state ID? Those are not available to illegals in any state. All newer state IDs AFAIK are REAL-ID enabled by default. And you probably will need to use some form of ID anyway pretty frequently.

[deleted]
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