Kerry Bretz Immigration Law Blog on Lawyers.com

Bretz & Coven, LLP, is a New York City immigration law firm, with clients throughout the New York Tri-State area, as well as across the country.  Many of them face removal proceedings due to their criminal records.  Over the past 15+ years, I have advised clients in New York on the immigration consequences of their convictions.  Over that same period, I have represented clients in New York with respect to their convictions before the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”), before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), and before numerous Immigration Judges.  Thus, from the local point of view of legal residents in New York, I was extremely pleased to hear that New York Governor Paterson announced a pardon plan aimed at helping legal residents with criminal records in New York.  In light of our long and wide experience in advising and representing noncitizens with criminal records, Bretz & Coven, LLP, is proud to announce that legal residents seeking a pardon can consult and retain us in preparing and filing applications under the Governor’s plan.

Governor Paterson’s plan would create a 5-member panel called the Immigration Board of Pardons.  The panel would help him to review “pardon applications of legal immigrants facing deportation as a result of criminal convictions.”  Receiving a pardon would vacate a legal resident’s state conviction, and thereby eliminate the deportation consequences.  According to Governor Paterson’s website, “persons seeking pardons to prevent deportation should continue to make their initial applications to the Executive Clemency Unit at the Division of Parole.”

Although neither a formal application nor an attorney is required, Bretz & Coven, LLP, is gearing up to assist clients in applying for a pardon.  We are uniquely equipped by expertise and experience at putting together a package of supporting documents for a pardon request, especially where there are immigration issues.  We typically gather similar supporting documents for submission to Immigration Judges who evaluate applications for relief of statutorily eligible respondents.  We also gather similar supporting documents for humanitarian-oriented deferred action applications to ICE field office directors when there is no practical remedy in a federal or administrative court for a noncitizen with a final order of removal.  As these and our other services involve essentially the same kinds of documents, Bretz & Coven, LLP, therefore has substantial relevant experience.   

Although this promising initiative is limited to New York residents, I welcome it nonetheless.  Governor Paterson is setting an example that should be followed nationwide by the other governors.  Through this initiative, the Governor is helping locally to counteract a major defect of the current federal immigration laws.  The defect is that those laws seem to indiscriminately mandate deportation without recognizing significant distinctions among offenses and offenders.   For example, deportation is a drastically life-altering penalty that should be reserved for the most serious and egregious offenses, not relatively minor or victimless ones.  In some cases, a deportable offense may have occurred so long ago that it seems questionable for the government to seek to deport the former offender as if he/she were an immediate and serious threat to the community.  Also, it is unfair for the government not to distinguish carefully among legal residents who do have serious convictions.  The reason is that some of them have impressive records of self-rehabilitation that warrant special consideration, which is not ordinarily available under the existing federal immigration laws.  A specific example, as reported in the New York Times, is that of Chinese immigrant, Qing Hong Wu, who was convicted of robbery as a teenager.  He consequently faced deportation.  However, in light of his exemplary self-rehabilitation over 15 years, which included rising to become an information technology executive, Governor Paterson pardoned him.  This shows how the Governor’s pardon plan provides Bretz & Coven, LLP, and other immigration law firms in New York City with another tool by which to help immigration clients.  

The situation for legal residents with convictions has worsened because the federal immigration laws: (1) became harsher and tougher during the mid-1990s and (2) are applied retroactively.  Every week, new clients consult me who have convictions dating before the mid-1990s that formerly involved little or no risk to their immigration status.  However, the mean-spirited expansion of the list of deportable aggravated felonies during the 1990s has retroactively made many noncitizens vulnerable to removal.  To their distress, they find out that their futures here are in jeopardy because of long-past crimes.  Some of them learn about the immigration consequences when they unwittingly depart the U.S. temporarily and try to re-enter.  Upon re-entry, they are often placed in deferred inspection or in a detention facility.  My heart goes out to them because they are being blind-sided by retroactive, ever harsher immigration laws. We, at Bretz & Coven, LLP, now look forward to being better able to help such clients as a result of the Governor’s new pardon plan.

For over 15 years, I have been advising and representing noncitizens with criminal histories.  I have long noted how they are harshly treated under the federal immigration laws.  These laws need to be reformed to be more humane, reasonable, and forgiving, as they apply to “so-called criminal aliens.”  The policy initiative of New York Governor Paterson to grant pardons, where warranted, to noncitizens will hopefully give a big boost to immigration reform.  Accordingly, Bretz & Coven, LLP, is committed to assisting our clients, where appropriate, in applying for a pardon under the plan announced by Governor Paterson.      

This article was provided by Mr. Kerry Bretz of Bretz & Coven, located 305 Broadway, Suite 100, New York, NY 10007-1109.  Bretz & Coven is a law firm aiding clients with New York City immigration help.