Program:
Paula McCandlis introduced today’s speaker, Bellingham attorney Elizabeth Li. She has practiced in Bellingham for 20 years, specializing in immigration law. Elizabeth was born in Taiwan, but immigrated to the United States with her parents when she was 5, living in South Carolina. She went to Cal-Berkeley and then to Loyola (Chicago) Law School. She later moved to Alaska where she met her future husband, an immigrant from Hungary. They got married and moved to Bellingham in 1999.
Elizabeth opened her remarks by clarifying that she was a transactional lawyer, not a trial lawyer. She assists people who are already in the country in applying for a status where they can remain here legally. She does not represent people who have been picked up and are threatened with being deported, which is an entirely separate area of the law.
Elizabeth said there are four main ways to come into the country legally: (1) Reunite family members; (2) Admit foreign nationals who have skills needed to help the U.S. economy; (3) Protect refugees; and (4) Promote diversity. By far the largest group is (1). She said that foreign national family members can be sponsored by U. S. citizens and permanent residents. There are from 225,000 to 400,000 applications of this type every year. The first preference under immigration law is for immediate relatives (spouse, unmarried children under 21 and parent of someone under 21). Those applicants have the best chance to become a permanent resident and obtain a green card. Of lesser priority are applications for unmarried adult children, and siblings of the sponsor. Other sponsors are churches, primarily for religious workers.
The second category is foreign nationals with job skills. The first priority is for aliens with extraordinary abilities such as outstanding researchers and professors sought by universities, multi-national executives and managers, owners, directors and CEOs. These folks don’t depend on testing the U.S. market to see if they are needed. However, people with lesser skills who don’t fit in this “extraordinary” category trigger a review of the U.S. market to see if people with those skills are needed. These people include members of a profession holding an advanced degree, people with a four- year degree with skills, and lesser skilled people.
The third category is refugees and those seeking asylum. Refugees are people outside the U.S. who have been displaced from their country because they are fleeing from persecution on the basis of race, religion, gender, political affiliation or status with a particular group. In 2019, so far 30,000 people have applied for admission based on refugee status. In contrast to refugees, people seeking asylum are already in the U.S. There is no limit to how many may be approved in one year. They must apply within one year of being admitted to the U.S. There were 428,000 pending asylum docket applications at the end of 2018. The list keeps growing.
The fourth category is to promote diversity. This is done through a visa lottery, where 55,000 people are admitted each year if they qualify for the lottery. To qualify, those seeking admission must be from identified countries that are underrepresented in the U.S.
There is also a fifth, but very rare category, which is an employment creation investor. To qualify, the foreign national must invest at least one million dollars in a business in the U.S. and generate at least ten jobs in one year.
Elizabeth closed her remarks by noting that her whole family is immigrants: her parents who escaped Communist China for Taiwan in the late 1940s, and then to the U.S.; she and her siblings; and her husband who immigrated from Hungary to Alaska, worked illegally for 12 years and eventually married her, a naturalized U.S. citizen. She loves the U.S. Not only is it a beautiful country which protects nature, but it is a land of laws where if someone does something wrong, you can obtain redress in the courts.
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