Introduction
Immigration law refers to the body of laws guiding the movement of people across national borders. There are various reasons why people move from one country to another. Some people move to reunite with their family members, pursue education, seek employment opportunities, or escape persecution. Regardless of the reason, immigration laws set the rules for entry into a country and determine who is eligible to stay, work or become a citizen. Immigration laws are complex and may vary depending on the country’s legal framework, the reasons for migration and the migrants’ nationality. This article provides an overview of immigration law and seeks to explore different aspects of immigration law.
Types of Immigration
Immigration falls into various categories depending on the purpose of the move, the length of stay, and the migrants’ qualifications. Some of the types of immigration include:
1. Family-Based Immigration
Family-based immigration occurs when a citizen or permanent resident of a country sponsors a family member to immigrate to that country. For instance, in the United States, a U.S citizen can sponsor their spouse, children, or parents to join them in the country.
2. Employment-Based Immigration
Employment-based immigration happens when a person migrates to work in another country. The migrant must possess relevant qualifications or have in-demand skills to qualify for employment-based immigration. In some countries, such as Canada, the immigration system favours individuals with specialized skills, education, and work experience. In the United States, there are five categories of employment-based immigration.
3. Asylum Seekers
Asylum seekers migrate to other countries to escape persecution or harm in their home countries. They are protected by international human rights laws and conventions, and countries must provide them with protection and assistance.
4. Student-based immigration
Student-based immigration refers to students who move to another country to pursue their education. They must obtain a visa that allows them to study in the country. They can also work while studying.
5. Investors
Investors move to another country either to start a new business or invest funds in an existing one. In return, they are granted residency status or citizenship.
Immigration Procedure
The immigration process is different for each country. However, some common requirements exist across most countries. These include:
Passport: A valid passport is required to enter most countries.
Visa: A visa allows a person to enter and stay in a country for a specific period. Not all countries require a visa. The type of visa required will depend on the purpose of travel.
Background Checks: Immigration officials perform background checks on prospective immigrants, including criminal records, medical fitness, and financial stability.
Language Proficiency: Some countries require migrants to demonstrate proficiency in the country’s official language.
Education/Work Experience: Some countries require proof of education or relevant work experience to qualify for immigration.
Medical Examination: Immigration officials require proof of good health before allowing a person to enter their country.
Types of Visas
The different types of visas include:
1. Tourist Visa
Tourist visas are issued to people wanting to visit another country for recreational or leisure purposes. The duration of the visa varies depending on the country and ranges from a few days to several months. Tourist visas are generally not renewable.
2. Temporary Residence Visa
A temporary residence visa allows a person to reside in a foreign country for a specified period. This type of visa is suitable for study, work, or cultural exchange programs. A temporary visa can be renewed if the migrant follows the renewal process.
3. Work Visa
A work visa allows a migrant to work temporarily in another country. The validity of this type of visa varies depending on the contract and the country’s laws.
4. Student Visa
A student visa permits a person to study in another country. The length of the visa will depend on the length of the course. Students are usually allowed to work during their studies.
5. Business Visa
A business visa allows a person to conduct business-related activities in a foreign country. This visa is suitable for people attending conferences, exhibitions or making business trips.
6. Schengen Visa
The Schengen visa is a visa that allows its holder to visit any of the 26 European countries that have implemented the Schengen Agreement without the need for a separate visa.
Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA)
The Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) is a document that an employer in Canada must obtain before hiring a foreign worker. The LMIA is issued by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and is used to assess the impact of hiring a foreign worker on the Canadian labour market. The process takes around ten weeks to complete. The employer must demonstrate that no Canadian citizen or permanent resident can fill the job vacancy before hiring a foreign worker. The process helps to ensure that the employment of foreign nationals does not adversely affect the employment prospects of Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
Express Entry
Express Entry is an online system used to manage applications for Permanent Residency (PR) in Canada. Express Entry candidates must meet the eligibility criteria, including completing an online profile that includes information about their education, work experience and language proficiency. They must also take a language test to provide proof of language proficiency and pass a medical and security check.
Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS)
The Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) is a points-based system used to rank candidates who have applied for PR in Canada through the Express Entry system. The CRS considers factors such as age, education, language proficiency, work experience, and job offers.
Citizenship
Citizenship is granted by a country to an individual based on the country’s laws and regulations. Citizenship provides the individual with the right to vote, work, and live in the country. The requirements for acquiring citizenship differ from one country to another, but they usually require the applicant to comply with certain legal conditions. An individual can acquire citizenship by birth within the country or through naturalization.
Conclusion
Immigration laws are complex and vary from one country to another. The discussion above provides some guidelines for obtaining visas, LMIA, or applying for Permanent Residency. Understanding immigration law is critical to ensure that individuals comply with legal requirements and avoid legal implications. It is essential to seek legal advice when considering moving or working in another country. Immigration law changes frequently, and it is important to stay up to date with the latest information. The above discussion provides some fundamental knowledge, and individuals should research their destination country’s specific laws and regulations before making any decisions.
As with the field of medicine, law can get fairly specific when it comes to subdivisions. When it comes to immigration law, therefore, there are immigration lawyers and whole law firms that work on the behalf of helping immigrants understand their legal rights or lack thereof. However, it is important for applicants to be judicious in the way they approach selecting a law firm, especially if they are inexperienced with using a lawyer’s services or understanding English. Consequently, non-residents and residents must do their research in finding a firm to assuage their legal concerns. One way to go about beginning a search for legal representation is over the Internet.
Through search engine and global positioning technology, which some search engines provide free of charge, it will be possible to identify and locate a number of law firms in your area that can better serve you, or at the very least, help you to weed out those which are not amenable to your cause. If a computer is not available or its use is not familiar to the applicant, checking the Yellow Pages of a municipal phone book might also be the ticket to creating a list of candidates for law firms you will consider consulting.
Even the U.S. embassy or consulate with which you secured a visa to the United States might be able to offer the name of an attorney or firm recommended by a patron, and additionally, the American Bar Association and American Immigration Lawyers Association should have lists of accredited, trustworthy firms which you can, if nothing else, contact for more information.
While there are many regularly updated online resources for the casual immigration law student, others who are not comfortable with Internet research and have had issues with the fidelity of the information they have previously obtained over the Internet may want to enlist the aid of print sources of information, even if they are unchanging. They may even wish to purchase each new edition of an individual guidebook to be certain that they are in possession of the most up-to-date facts. Popular book series such as “Immigration Law and Procedure in a Nutshell” might therefore be a good investment even for the long-term.
One major reason is that these print guides are often quite comprehensive in the amount of information they provide for the reader, including a historical perspective that allows the user to appreciate how broad the branch of law is that they are trying to understand. Besides, the history of important changes in national and international immigration law certainly will not change from edition to edition. Still, these guides are only general sources of information, and are really meant as more of a jumping off point than an actual substitute for qualified legal representation.
Induction into American society centuries ago was as relatively simple as stepping off a boat at an established port of entry, clearing medical examinations, and receiving certification of one’s ability to legally live in the United States. Imaginably, the steps and safeguards built into the modern immigration process are much stricter and numerous than before, with new agencies being founded to process the flow of information between the different tiers of government and new qualifications for permanent residence and visa for travelinternational bordersdeportationwork
Seeing as immigration law is a pretty narrow field relative to the general pursuit of law and compared with other topics that are more accessible to a mainstream audience (e.g. entertainment news), it may be rather hard to find information on immigration law news by only rifling through the newspaper. The global proliferation of information and the sheer number of sources professing to be experts on individual topics has grown by leaps and bounds alongside advances in technology.
Thus, to stay ahead of the curve, the consumer must seek out multiple ways of getting new information on a subject such as immigration law. Certainly, reading news stories from viable news sources is not impossible over the Internet; on the contrary, the speed of Internet searches allows for a quicker consolidation of relevant information, and what’s more, this news can be automatically sent to your E-mail or mobile communications device using simple syndicated feeds.
Blogs, while not an official news source and, consequently, at risk of be factually inaccurate, nonetheless penetrate the more diplomatic aspects of the news and allow you to view current events from a different viewpoint, enhancing your understanding of the subject matter. Social networking, while generally being less informative by virtue of character limits and likewise subject to opinion and bias, is yet faster than its cohorts and is often utilized by official organizations to promote their news and services.
The issue of illegal immigration in our country is one that is already complex given its moral and legal aspects. The language of the law further creates a sense of complexity; for instance, an immigrant and an alien may be two different classes of foreign-born individuals. Illegal immigrants and criminal immigrants, too, are not one in the same. In the way there is a distinction between immigration law and
Two terms that also incorrectly get inflated are “anti-immigration” and “anti-illegal immigration”. One can be a proponent of immigration and yet still an opponent to illegal immigration on the simple basis of one satisfying the conditions of law and one failing to. An expansive 2005 bill on immigration branded as anti-immigration legislation called for illegal immigrants, regardless of other criminality, to be mandatorily detained and deported by authorities and prohibited pro-illegal sympathizers from aiding them.
The bill, which stood to affect millions of immigrants if passed into law and prosecuted to its full extent, never became official for a number of reasons. H.R. 4437, as the bill was officially termed, angered members of the Mexican and Latino communities, of which a majority of illegal aliens are members, as they saw the motion as a means of criminalizing the desire of undocumented immigrants for a better life.
Those lawmakers whose constituencies contain large numbers of these populations, too, might nominally have rejected the bill for fear they would alienate those voters. There are other logistical concerns with such strict enforcement of immigration law, namely the cost of these measures, the risk that legal immigrants could wrongfully be detained amidst the enthusiasm, and the idea that undocumented aliens are an immeasurable part of the work force.
With all the statutes, amendments and corollaries inherent in law, it can be difficult to navigate this field without a substantive reference book, even for a legal professional. Keeping this in mind, while you make take a hit financially in purchasing a print handbook on immigration law, the time you save in having an easy-to-use, comprehensive resource at hand may be worth more than your initial deposit.
One element of a good immigration law handbook is dictionary definitions for some of the more obtuse terms, hopefully contained in a glossary and/or bolded or italicized within the text to pop out to the reader. To break up the text, easy-to-follow notes to the reader are also prudent, especially when an immigration applicant chooses to represent him- or herself. Moreover, if possible, a country-by-country list of
Regardless of one’s stance on illegal immigration, chances are they have some viewpoint on how reform of immigration should be addressed. Whether the individual calls for zero tolerance, full allowance or a compromise of various components, certain key issues under the larger issue of illegal immigration are universal.
Obviously, for people to enter the country illegally, they must cross our land and maritime borders illegally, so border patrol is a topic of considerable concern. While security of the nation’s international boundaries is vital, and fortifying the protective measures of those boundaries is a positive thing, a trade-off exists in the federal funding and local law enforcement resources that stand to be diverted by an intensification of immigration law enforcement.
Another area of interests lies with employers who make use of illegal labor, sometimes exclusively. Between the two sides, there are varying views on the necessity of fining employers who resort to such methods and questions made by some about how many jobs undocumented aliens are really taking away from the American workforce. The idea of an amnesty program or other path to citizenship is yet another point of contention, with fervent conservatives generally crying foul over affording any benefits to illegals whatsoever.
Through all of this debate and with whatever happens with immigration reform, the United States government hopes to work together with Mexico to help them secure their borders and aid the convalescence of their economy to make illegal immigration less of an incentive.
Immigration Law and Disease
When America first got word of the global HIV/AIDS situation in the 1980’s, little was understood about the disease and how it is transmitted. Much stigmatization of those individuals who suffered and died from complications of AIDS occurred. Although we have not found a cure for HIV and AIDS, we realistically know much more about these conditions, specifically with regard to their origins and treatment for their symptoms.
It is therefore somewhat surprising that it was only relatively recently that restrictions were taken lifted that barred HIV-positive individuals from legally immigrating to the United States. Such restrictions were made as amendments 23 years ago to the Immigration and Naturalization Act, and this reversal corrected a policy that was, at best, ill-informed, and at worst, blatantly prejudicial.
In terms of the United States’ place in rescinding the HIV ban, in truth, it is still late compared to many others’ decisions. Nevertheless, there are other countries that still have yet to do away with restrictions on HIV-positive travelers: China, Brunei, Qatar, Yemen, Russian, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, the Sudan, and Papua New Guinea.
While it may seem as if the sacrament of marriage should be impervious to the reaches of the law, this institution is very much a legal distinction in the United States and is taken very seriously by the federal government.
Consequently, there are rules specified by the government concerning the assimilation of a foreign-born national to the country through marriage, despite outdated conceptions of the green card (another name for the U.S. Permanent Resident Card, a symbol of permanent residency) being a fast track to completing the naturalization process. With an application for a visa, a bona fide spousal or fiancé relationship must exist, which much be evidenced in an interview with both the alien and the U.S. citizen alongside proper forms, fees, ID, and records (e.g. bank statements) that would signify they live together.
Also, before becoming a lawful permanent resident, an individual who acquired the ability to live on American soil through marriage must submit and application to remove the conditions on their residence.
