FAIR In Your Community - FIGHTING for JOBS FOR AMERICANS

FAIR in Your Community


Update from FAIR's Legal Arm IRLI (Immigration Reform Law Institute):

The Programmer's Guild v. Chertoff

On November 13, 2009, IRLI filed a petition to the United States Supreme Court asking for review of a Third Circuit decision denying 11 computer programmers, scientists and engineers and three organizations representing such citizens the ability to challenge a rule which increases the number of foreign workers competing with them for jobs in their respective fields by 40,000 foreign workers per year. The Bush Administration used the student visa program to circumvent the labor quotas in the H-1B tech guest worker visa program to appease businesses that were denied an increased number of foreign workers when the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bills were not passed in 2006 and 2007.

Mendez v. Bradshaw

On November 23, 2009, the Southern District Court of Florida granted IRLI’s motion to represent the Florida Sheriffs’ Association's position in a case involving the constitutionality of ICE detainers. The Plaintiffs, represented by Latino Justice PRLDEF, claimed that their illegal alien plaintiff’s rights were violated because the Sheriff allegedly refused him bond and allegedly unlawfully continued to hold the illegal alien at the request of ICE. IRLI’s brief addresses the authority of state and local officers’ to enforce civil immigration law, the constitutionality of state officers holding illegal aliens temporarily at the request of ICE, and whether state and local officers are immune from civil suit when assisting ICE in the enforcement of immigration law.

Mocci v. Connolly Properties, Inc.

On November 25, 2009, IRLI filed a Notice of Appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of a tenant living in an apartment complex managed by Connolly Properties, Inc. in Northern New Jersey. The tenant had filed a RICO claim alleging that the various individual defendants were unlawfully harboring illegal aliens in his apartment building. The District Court of New Jersey dismissed the claim holding that the tenant had not plead a valid harboring claim. Numerous Courts of Appeals differ on the definition of harboring, and ultimately this confusion will be resolved by the Supreme Court which has not issued a decision on harboring in over 60 years.