More Immigration Attorneys Turn To Online Petitions
Mariana van Zeller
Updated
(Photo: )
After consulting with eight different immigration attorneys, and spending $10,000 in lawyers' fees over the course of five years, Manuel Guerra lost hope that he would be allowed to stay in the U.S.
"The [attorneys] were all were telling me the same thing: to sign my voluntary departure form," Guerra told The Huffington Post. Guerra, who says he came to the U.S. illegally when he was 16 to escape Mexico's gang violence, was finally encouraged by yet another attorney, Richard Hujber, to try one last thing -- an online petition at Change.org.
So Guerra created an account, and wrote a letter to the public explaining his story. "I have made the United States of America my home, my adopted country and the land where I found freedom and purpose of life. That is a reason to live and a reason worth of fighting for," Guerra wrote in his petition.
After years of battling with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), just weeks after publishing the petition, the agency stopped Guerra's deportation proceedings. He says the petition and the public outcry it created made the difference for him.
Guerra's case isn't unique, however. The Obama administration's announcement last year that it would prioritize prosecutorial discretion, a policy which favors the deportations of criminal immigrants over those of non-criminals, has triggered some immigration attorneys to employ public outrage to help their clients, according to Change.Org spokesperson and campaigner Gabriela Garcia. Change.org has seen more than 10 new immigration-related petitions each month, and more than 20 immigration-related "victories" in the last year, Garcia told The Huffington Post.
"We've seen an increase in the number of petitions about immigration cases, and an increase in immigration attorneys who've started them when they run out of legal recourses for helping their clients," Garcia said.
However, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christiansen downplayed the influence of online petitions in the agency's decisions to halt deportation proceedings. "ICE exercises prosecutorial discretion on a case-by-case basis, depending upon the unique circumstances of an individual’s case and whether or not it falls outside the bounds of the agency’s enforcement priorities," she wrote in an email. Decisions are made by the agency's attorneys, based solely on legal justifications, she told The Huffington Post. Christiansen was unwilling to speak on the record specifically about the influence of public opinion and online petitions on ICE decision-making.
But Matthew Muller, a California-based immigration attorney, says the agency is "definitely worried about the public implications of their decisions."
"Even if ICE doesn't wake up every morning and check Change.org, the site's petitions are affecting the agency in some form," Muller told The Huffington Post.
Muller says the petitions can help link attorneys with those who need representation and alert media outlets to extreme cases. "Change.org is a bridge to traditional media, which is definitely something ICE is paying attention to," he said.
Earlier this year, Muller himself used a Change.org petition to demand that ICE halt the deportation proceedings of his client Blanca Medina, a mother who faced the threat of sexual abuse if returned to her home country. He says that when he ran out of legal options to help his client, he hoped public outrage would shame the agency into changing their ruling. The petition collected over 118,000 signatures and attracted media attention. The petition worked, Muller says.
"With the prosecutorial discretion policy, press attention and public outrage don't hurt," Muller said.
Manuel Guerra, who claims an online petition encouraged ICE to halt his deportation proceedings, now spends his free time filing petitions for undocumented strangers.
"After they stopped my deportation so many people asked me for help," he told The Huffington Post. "So now I start petitions on their behalves or I show them how to do it."
The Naturalization Act of 1790
The Naturalization Act of 1790 was our country's first set of laws dealing with citizenship. Applicants had to be "a free white person" of "good moral character." This excluded indentured servants and slaves. Good moral character was substantiated by establishing residence for at least one year in the state from where he was applying, and at least two years of residence in the country. The Naturalization Act of 1795 would extend that requirement to five years, and is still standard today.
The Fourteenth Amendment, 1868
A Reconstruction Amendment that was added to the U.S. Constitution following the Civil War, the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment establishes for the first time that children born on U.S. soil would be conferred U.S. citizenship regardless of their parent's citizenship status, race, or place of birth. Last year, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) introduced the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011 to Congress, and challenged this. The bill would require that at least one parent be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident for a child to be granted citizenship. According to the bill's text, the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011 would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and "clarify those classes of individuals born in the United States who are nationals and citizens of the United States at birth." Prior to this, Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) introduced a similar bill in 2009.
The Naturalization Act of 1870
The Naturalization Act of 1870 explicitly extended naturalization laws to "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent." This meant that for the first time, African-American children would be conferred citizenship upon birth. Asian immigrants and other people of color are excluded per the Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1795.
The Page Act of 1875
Named after Republican Representative Horace F. Page, this is the first U.S. federal immigration law to explicitly prohibit the immigration of a particular group: persons of Asian descent. Primarily meant to limit Chinese immigrant labor and prostitution, the Page Act prohibited the immigration of: (1) contracted labor from "China, Japan, or any Oriental country" that was not "free and voluntary," (2) Chinese prostitution and (3) criminals and women who would engage in prostitution. Ultimately, the Page Act severely restricted the immigration of Asian women. Only 136 of the the nearly 40,000 Chinese immigrants who arrived in the months before the bill's enforcement were women. And, it would pave the way for the Chinese Exclusion Act. In this picture, Michael Lin, chair of the 1882 Project, a coalition of rights groups seeking a statement of regret over that year's Chinese Exclusion Act, speaks on May 26, 2011 in Washington, DC, at the US House of Representatives in front of a reproduction of a 19th-century sign that aimed at rousing up sentiment against Chinese Americans. Lawmakers introduced a bill that would offer an official statement of regret for the act, which banned further immigration of Chinese to the United States and ended citizenship rights for ethnic Chinese. (AFP PHOTO/SHAUN TANDON).
The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882
Signed by President Chester A. Arthur, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first federal immigration law to prohibit immigration on the basis of race. The bill barred all Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, from immigrating to the U.S. for ten years. It was made permanent by 1903, and was not lifted until the 1943 Magnuson Act. The 1898 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark finally extended naturalization laws to persons of Chinese descent by ruling that anyone born in the United States was indeed a U.S. citizen. This editorial cartoon from 1882 shows a Chinese man being excluded from entry to the "Golden Gate of Liberty." The sign next to the iron door reads, "Notice--Communist, Nihilist, Socialist, Fenian & Hoodlum welcome. But no admittance to Chinamen." At the bottom, the caption reads, "THE ONLY ONE BARRED OUT. Enlightened American Statesman--'We must draw the line somewhere, you know.'" (Image Source: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, vol. 54 (1882 April 1), p. 96. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons).
The Naturalization Act of 1906
The Naturalization Act of 1906 further defined the naturalization process: the ability to speak English was made a requisite for immigrants to adjust their status.
The Immigration Act of 1924
U.S. President Coolidge signed this U.S. federal bill into law. It capped the number of immigrants who could be admitted entry to the U.S. and barred immigration of persons who were not eligible for naturalization. And, as the Naturalization Act of 1790 required, an immigrant had to be white in order to naturalize. The quotas varied by country. Image Source: Flickr Creative Commons, NYCMarines.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act)
The McCarran-Walter Act kept up the controversial Immigration Act of 1924, but formally ended Asian exclusion.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, it abolished the quota system that favored immigration from Europe and limited immigration from Asia and South America.
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) is a piece of legislation that defined an array of issues to do with legal and illegal immigration -- from outlining how border patrol agents should administer visa processing, to the minutiae of how to handle deportation proceedings -- IIRIRA established enforcement and patrolling practices.
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![Signed by President Chester A. Arthur, the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/seven/chinxact.htm " target="_hplink">Chinese Exclusion Act</a> was the first federal immigration law to prohibit immigration on the basis of race. The bill barred all Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, from immigrating to the U.S. for ten years. It was made permanent by 1903, and was not lifted until the 1943 Magnuson Act. The 1898 Supreme Court <a href="http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/exclusion.html " target="_hplink">decision</a> in <em>United States v. Wong Kim Ark</em> finally extended naturalization laws to persons of Chinese descent by ruling that anyone born in the United States was indeed a U.S. citizen. This editorial cartoon from 1882 shows a Chinese man being excluded from entry to the "Golden Gate of Liberty." The sign next to the iron door reads, "Notice--Communist, Nihilist, Socialist, Fenian & Hoodlum welcome. But no admittance to Chinamen." At the bottom, the caption reads, "THE ONLY ONE BARRED OUT. Enlightened American Statesman--'We must draw the line <em>somewhere</em>, you know.'" (Image Source: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, vol. 54 (1882 April 1), p. 96. [Public domain], via <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_only_one_barred_out_cph.3b48680.jpg" target="_hplink">Wikimedia Commons</a>).](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/7fXkatUGJ4yoqKwCbmm0yg--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MA--/https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5bae6a412200003501daf2ce.jpg)
