It can be daunting and frustrating to undergo the immigration process. Most people will find themselves overwhelmed when they start to sit down and mull over all the immigration forms. Most straightforward cases can be lucky enough to go through the immigration process without too many snags along the way. However, reasons for hiring a good immigration lawyer to guide you through the process are many.

To start off, complicated and complex cases should seek the advice of a good immigration lawyer, as the one who does not have the time to dedicate or lacks confidence in preparing the forms themselves. But selecting a good immigration attorney requires homework. There are many scams out there that claim that they can do so much for your case, take money and fees, but come out with no results.

“Firstly, it is important to get references by asking family, friends or co-workers. What happens is that people generally are apt to tell someone about a good lawyer or good service and are quicker to tell someone who isn’t good or what to avoid,” said Annie Banerjee, a Houston immigration attorney from the Law Offices of Annie Banerjee.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is a database where the public can search for attorneys who either teach or practice immigration law. By doing research on this website, it is possible to narrow down a good immigration lawyer while being more certain that they have considerable knowledge of immigration laws.

Set up interviews with the lawyers and narrow it down some more. Then compare their fees and rates. Some charge by the hour, while some lawyers charge a flat rate. Be careful to ask if they tack on those additional fees that involve stamps, long distance calls or courier fees.

Lastly, be sure to check their credentials by simply checking with your state local bar to confirm whether or not the lawyer is in good standing, is licensed in the state and if there were any disciplinary actions on him or her in the past.

To learn more, visit Visatous.com.

This weekend I’m going out with some friends to a Korean restaurant in Houston. Not the kind of place where the menu is in Korean and the food looks like it could be in Seoul. We don’t have such places in Houston, or New York, or LA. To find authentic food, other than that country, you need to travel to Canada. Why? Because we will simply not give immigration to Chefs.

President Obama reiterated our Sputnik moment, a moment when we competed with Russia in the space war and won it. And yes, we want the brightest and the best. But only the brightest and the best in Science. We give an additional 17 month work permit for foreign students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. The rest of the subjects don’t matter to us. In general Extraordinary Ability visas are easier for Scientists to obtain than artists. And yes, the measly budget that the Government spends on the National Endowment for the Arts gets slashed every time, to increase budgets like the military.

As a Society we consciously chose to become a melting pot. And we did that with great success. Countries like Canada, England or France which chose multiculturalism created sub classes of immigrants with awful race relations. Yet we are not adding to our melting pot.

During New York’s Fashion Week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg argued that the country’s immigration policies jeopardize New York’s status as “the fashion capital of the world,” saying they limit visas for designers, manufacturers and, yes, models. Similarly throughout the country artistic performances get canceled because artists don’t get visas. And what’s strange is that most politicians, including President Obama are humanities majors. Yet until they realize the importance of the arts, I have to be content with my American version of Korean food.

For more information contact Houston Immigration Lawyer or Houston Immigration Attorney, Annie Banerjee

When most Americans think of immigrants, they think of Mexicans or Latinos because of the latest Arizona anti-immigration laws and the anti-immigration sentiment that is running through the fabric of the country. However, the immigrant experience actually runs the gamut as they come from all over the world.

But imagine every imaginable variable thrown into the spoke of a bicycle wheel. That is how far and wide the human drama continues as the stories of each complex and unique immigration story develops. Heartbreaking stories, such as the one about an uninsured immigrant in California, have been featured in places like the New American Media website. The woman, having learned that she has breast cancer, will be battling the disease alone, because she is alone in the United States – her family in another country can’t be by her side when they desperately want to.

And how about the Filipina, who after having arranged to meet her longtime boyfriend, gets stranded at the airport because she fell suddenly ill and had to be hospitalized because of a colitis flare-up? Her fiancé now cannot help her come down to see him. Stranded and all alone, she is forced to go back. Not knowing how or why, nor reason or rhyme.

“The immigrant experience is not just the undocumented migrant farm worker but encompasses many cultures from many walks of life, and affects the lives of these men, women and children in ways most of us can’t even fathom,” said Annie Bannerjee, an immigration lawyer at The Law Offices of Annie Banerjee in Houston.

There are many ways illegal immigrants come into the country that are not the stereotypical crossing-the-border over-the-Rio Grande, or floating on a small boat floating haphazardly from Cuba. There are a myriad of horror stories. It is a wonder how they even survive. Some involve women and children without anything to their name and no affiliations to call upon.

Sometimes people make their way by being lured and connived by someone promising a way to get here and then find themselves slaving away in a sweatshop, not knowing where they are, having no one to speak to, having no money in their pockets. Stranded. There are stories about a sex-worker who was trucked in by a human trafficker and forced to perform acts not of her will.

What do most immigrants have in common? It is the dream for having a better tomorrow, which is a common human trait and a fundamental human right.

To learn more, visit Visatous.com.

In the light of anti-immigration rhetoric during the mid-term elections and the ongoing political debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has proposed to take away the language of “sanctuary cities”.

Sanctuary cities are the cities that provide “sanctuary” from police officers enforcing immigration laws, prohibiting them from enforcing immigration policies as part of their policing efforts. There are several cities in Texas that are considered to be sanctuary cities, including San Antonio, Houston and El Paso.

However, Gov. Perry has not named any sanctuary cities, making contradictory remarks on his stance on immigration reform. Recently, 30 bills were filed in Texas legislature concerning a lot of talking points issues regarding immigration. Some of the items at the forefront of the legislature session are state services, immigration records, fees for money transactions, deeming English the official language, and redistricting.

Gov. Perry has deemed the selection of sanctuary cities as an emergency priority item, and by doing so will push the issue in front of other issues. Sanctuary cities are a large part of the Texas Republican platform that opposes amnesty to immigrants in any form, a position offensive to much of the Texas population. In 2009, it had been reported that Hispanics or Latinos make up at least 36.9 percent of the Texas population.

It is uncertain when the term “sanctuary city” came about, but more and more cities across the country, such as Detroit and 30 other cities, are standing behind the “don’t ask, don’t tell” practice of police enforcement not subjecting its citizens to the question of their immigration status. It is suggested that the notion of sanctuary cities came about when churches started providing aid to migrant workers who fled from the 1980s civil war in Central America.

Technically, sanctuary cities go against the grain of the 9/11 Commission Report, yet training and support at state and local levels is still lacking and municipalities are having a hard time with allocating resources to enforce immigration policies and to blatantly go against civil right policies. Gov. Perry is being criticized by his peers for making sanctuary cities an emergency issue, rather than Texas’ budgetary issues that can affect Texas schools and the Texas public health system.

A. Banerjee is a Houston immigration lawyer in Texas. Before selecting an immigration lawyer in Houston Texas, contact the Law Offices of Annie Banerjee by visiting their information filled web site at http://www.visatous.com.

In order to do a Labor Certification, commonly known by its acronym, PERM, the US employer has to “test” the labor market to prove that no Americans are available to do the job. They do this by advertising in various places. The Department of Labor prescribes to us which particular places we can advertise. And that’s where this game starts. Its a stilted process which has no resemblance to real life. We have to advertise in the Sunday edition of a newspaper. While this might keep the newspaper industry in the US afloat, in real life especially for jobs like “software engineer”–nobody reads print newspapers anymore. Then we have to advertise in the State Workforce Agency’s web site. I bet you did not know that each state has a job search website run by the workforce agency. I did a google search on “Engineering jobs in Texas” and the workforce agency’s website did not come up in the first two pages.

Yet when employers use a private Recruitment firm to do the “test” of labor market, they can get denied unless they have adequate documents to delineate exactly how they conducted recruitment. In re Unica Corporation, Balca 2010-PER-00006

So my advise to Employers is play the game by the DOL rules. In this game, the referee (DOL) is unforgiving, so avoid fouls by keeping meticulous records of all advertisement and recruitment report before starting to play the PERM game. If you are using any private recruitment agency, have a signed statement from them as to what they did, and keep it in the file. Follow the letter of the law, not its intent. Is this contrary to American jurisprudence? You bet.

For more information contact Houston Immigration Lawyer or Houston Immigration Attorney, Annie Banerjee