Author: James Montana

This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Victoria Khaydar, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

Make some dough! (Photo credit, if credit is what the photo deserves: James Montana)

Our little law office is hiring for at least one position: Legal Intern (Spring Semester). The details and tips on how to apply are below, in Q&A style. We are also interested in bringing on another staff member – perhaps a law graduate studying for the bar, or a lawyer who is interested in part time work. For details, see below.

Q: Hiring, eh? How much cash on the barrel?

A: Depends on the position. The Law Clerk position is paid hourly, and the amount depends on your background. (Certain local law schools won’t give you class credit if we pay you. We prefer to pay you $25/hour, but we can forgo paying you if that’s what you need.)

Q: What? I thought that lawyers dove into piles of gold coins all day, like Scrooge McDuck!

A: It depends. On Wall Street, we are reliably informed that big law firm partners can make more than $15,000,000 per year – more than the bankers who pay them! Immigration lawyers are much more modestly compensated.

Q: Why should I work for you? ICE pays a $50K starting bonus and I want to deport illegals with my absolute boys!

A: We offer great benefits and a wonderful place to work.

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This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Victoria Khaydar, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

The full court press in the immigration system continues. There are a half-dozen things we could talk about, but for the sake of space, we’ll stick to the Double Freeze announced by USCIS topics: the affirmative asylum system is now frozen solid, and the expansion of the travel ban to domestic immigration applications has frozen most adjudications for every single national of every country covered by the current travel ban.

The Asylum System is Frozen

An Afghan asylee, Rahmanullah Lakanwall, has been charged with shooting two National Guard troopers, Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom. Ms. Beckstrom died of her wounds and Mr. Wolfe remains under medical care. Within hours, USCIS reacted to this murder by freezing the affirmative asylum system. According to our understanding, this is the state of play:

1. Interviews are continuing.
2. No decisions are being made. That means that no one is being granted asylum by the Arlington Asylum Office and its sister offices across the country. But, equally importantly, no one is being denied asylum by the asylum office either. The backlog of asylum cases, already horrific, is going to balloon.

Here are a few key points about USCIS putting the asylum system on ice.

1. The Immigration Courts continue to function. They continue to grant, and deny, asylum cases. USCIS lacks the bureaucratic wherewithal to stop this, because the Immigration Courts are housed within the Department of Justice.
2. The ‘freeze’ has inadvertently set up a perverse incentive. If you apply for asylum, you have the right to apply for a work permit if your application is pending for 150 days or longer, renewable so long as the asylum application remains pending. A frozen asylum system – assuming it continues indefinitely – equates to work permits for all affirmative asylum applicants. That cannot be their intent, and will quickly become intolerable for DHS’s political leadership.

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This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Taryn Druge, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

With Thanksgiving upon us, we really wanted to write about What We’re Grateful For. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for Burma this week, so we’ll have to save gratitude for a later date. Right now, we want to make sure that our understand the nature of the termination, so Burmese TPS holders can consider next steps and everyone else understands the Trump Administration’s aggressive approach to TPS terminations.

Burma – also known as Myanmar – suffered a coup d’etat in February 2021. (Those of us who spend too much time on the internet may remember the exercise instructor, Khing Hnin Wai, who demonstrated an exercise routine while a military convoy sped down the highway behind her.) The coup nullified the results of the 2020 elections and put a military government fully in control of the government; the country’s top elected leaders, including Aung Sang Suu Kyi, were jailed on false charges. Protests against the junta mushroomed into a full-scale civil war between the regime and its opponents. The civil war is still ongoing today.

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This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Victoria Khaydar, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

We think of the state as all-knowing, but, as the anthropologist James Scott pointed out in Seeing Like The State, Leviathan is born blind. In order to impose order, the state must first be able to see its subjects as individuals who can be tracked and categorized. Human nature tosses sand in the state’s eyes. People change names (upon birth, upon marriage, upon divorce, upon whim), occupations, addresses, incomes, and the interpersonal relationships amongst themselves. This creates a massive problem for the state: How can it even know the identities of its subjects?

In the United States, the government has traditionally relied mostly on self-reporting for citizens. Readers of this column will not be surprised to learn that we treat immigrants quite differently: we demand stacks of identifying documents, fingerprints, and biometric information as part of benefits adjudication and deportation proceedings. The Department of Homeland Security has quietly proposed to expand this system by collecting more biometric data, more frequently – including DNA! – and, in parallel, to expand this system by collecting biometric data on U.S. Citizens who interact with the immigration system. The purpose of this article is to explain what the Department of Homeland Security proposes to do, and then to speculate briefly about why.

The Department of Homeland Security proposes to expand its biometrics collection system in the following ways:

1. Expand the types of biometrics collected from immigrants. Currently, only fingerprint, signature, and facial recognition data are collected at biometrics. That’s not enough! DHS proposes to collect “ocular image, palm print, voice print, and DNA” from immigrants.
2. Expand the frequency of biometrics collection. Currently, DHS frequently reuses biometric information when an applicant applies for a subsequent benefit. (For example, if you apply for a green card, DHS collects your biometric information; later, when you apply for citizenship, DHS reuses its electronic records. No longer!) DHS’s view is that the enforcement benefits of “continuous vetting” outweigh the inconvenience and cost of repeated biometric appointments.
3. Expand the population of immigrants subject to biometrics collection. Currently, immigrant applicants under the age of 14 are exempt from biometrics collection. (The fingerprints and faces of children have a remarkable, and from the perspective of Leviathan, irritating propensity for change.) DHS’s view is that these challenges can be overcome, and overcoming them is worth doing for enforcement reasons.
4. Expand the categories of people subject to biometrics collection. Currently, U.S. citizens who interact with the immigration system are generally exempt from biometrics collection. Not anymore! DHS proposes that any U.S. Citizen who participates in an immigration application – as a petitioning spouse, say, or as a financial supporter – must report for biometrics collection, including, potentially, the aforementioned DNA collection.

DHS’s purported justification for collecting biometric data en masse from US citizens is “protecting vulnerable populations.” For example, DHS suggests that in the current system, immigrants are insufficiently protected from convicted sex offenders and domestic abusers – collecting biometric information from every single U.S. citizen involved in the immigration system would help DHS to protect vulnerable immigrants more thoroughly.

DHS’s purported justification for collecting biometrics data repeatedly from non-citizens is that “continuous immigration vetting and […] continued and subsequent evaluation” is meant “to ensure they continue to present no risks to national security or public safety subsequent to their entry.”

The real reasons for this expansion of state power are known only to the Trump Administration. But we would suggest that this new program of biometrics collection is likely to be expensive, duplicative, ineffective, and creepy. The current biometrics system already requires millions of appointments per year, supervised by an army of contractors. Adding millions more appointments will ensure that more contractors get paid, but it is unclear how retaking fingerprints will make it easier to track immigrants over time. Moreover, demanding DNA submission as part of the immigration process is enormously invasive. The Supreme Court, in Maryland v. King, ruled that routine collection of DNA is permissible for those who are “already in valid police custody for a serious offense supported by probable cause.” Subjecting millions of immigrants (and US citizens!) per year to a data collection standard meant for suspected felons strikes us as just one more example of this administration’s hostility to immigrants and their families.

This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Victoria Khaydar, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

The purpose of this sponsored post is to introduce Victoria Khaydar, our brilliant new associate. We’re proud to have her! By way of introduction, here are a few questions to Victoria from the Pointy-Headed Boss.

PHB: How did you come to the practice of immigration law?

Victoria: This will sound cheesy, but I was definitely influenced by my own family’s immigration journey. Navigating complex immigration minefields as a child probably left me a few scars and anxieties. I want to lend others a helping hand, at least to the extent that I have figured this immigration thing out.

PHB: Why do you enjoy the practice of immigration law. (“Big assumption there!” – Ed.)

Victoria: I love that immigration law is a human-centered practice. An immigration case is basically a human interest story with a problem you get to solve. This was always my favorite part of law school casebooks before they got to the boring legal principles.

Plus, you get to meet people from all over the world! I have no data to back this up but immigration attorneys are very good at geography and language trivia.

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This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Victoria Khaydar, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

As we’ve repeatedly written, the Trump Administration has a resource scarcity problem – it simply does not have the detention beds and transportation facilities to deport as many migrants as it wishes. Moreover, it does not have enough immigration judges to handle the pending immigration docket, which still has nearly four million pending cases. Recruiting and training new immigration judges takes time. Time is a luxury for the Trump Administration, which senses (we believe) that it has a limited window of opportunity to implement its agenda. So, what to do? The subject of this advertorial is the Administration’s latest idea: combing the Pentagon for lawyers and slotting them into immigration judge roles. For now, the Administration is just relaxing the rules and asking for ‘volunteers.’ But hundreds of military immigration judges may be coming soon to courthouses near you.

First, a brief backgrounder on immigration judges. Immigration Judges are not Article 3 judges, appointed with Senate approval and given life tenure. Instead, Immigration Judges are Article 1 officials – administrative law judges, in DC parlance – who work within the Department of Justice as civil servants. Presidents can (and do) fire or reassign immigration judges; President Trump has been more energetic than most of his predecessors in both hiring and firing.

Presidents of both parties have worked to expand the ranks of immigration judges. Over the past decade, the number almost tripled, from 250 to 735, before the firings and reassignments at the beginning of the current Presidential term pushed the number below 700 again.

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This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq. and Janice Chen, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

On Friday, September 19, 2025, the Trump Administration published a Proclamation – “Restriction on Entry of Certain Non-Immigrant Workers” – which purported to impose a $100,000 ‘supplemental fee’ on all petitions, with the penalty being that visas – that is, entry documents provided by the US Embassies and consulates abroad – would not be issued for any beneficiary of a petition for which the supplemental fee had not been paid. The Proclamation did not explain whether this $100,000 ‘supplemental fee’ applied only to prospective H-1B petitions or to current petitions. The plain text of the Proclamation suggested that it applied to all H-1B workers “currently outside the United States” as of 12:01 AM EST on September 21, 2025. Therefore, every H-1B visaholder who happened to be outside the U.S. on September 19th had excellent reason to panic. Corporations, including Google, and Amazon, reacted rationally by telling their workers to drop everything and fly home, pronto.

On Saturday, September 20, 2025, USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow published a one-page memorandum that walked back the worst elements of the Proclamation. It clarified matters, at least to a degree, by stating that the proclamation “only applies prospectively to petitions that have not yet been filed” and not to current H-1B visaholders. On Sunday, September 21, 2025, the Department of State and Customs and Border Protection released similar clarifications.

The result of this haphazard rollout was – predictably – chaos, which sparked criticism across the ideological spectrum, from Steve Bannon to tech industry trade groups. Even the attempts to reassure current H-1B visaholders fell flat, because – incredibly – the Administration appears not to have decided yet whether the $100,000 surcharge is annual or once every three years, or whether it applies to changes of employer outside the annual lottery process.

This chaos managed to overshadow another massive change to the H-1B process – a notice of proposed regulatory action, by which the Administration is seeking to eliminate the current H-1B lottery, which allocates visas randomly so long as the proposed employment meets the threshold qualifications and does not fall the prevailing wages observed by the Department of Labor. In its place, the Administration is seeking to create a ‘weighted’ system which prioritizes positions that are being paid at higher than the prevailing wage. Note that, unlike the 2021 proposed revisions, this new proposed system doesn’t prioritize the highest-wage positions, as an absolute matter, but rather prioritizes those positions with the greatest difference between the wage offered to the foreign employee and the prevailing wage. If the prevailing wage for legal secretaries is $50,000 per year and you offer to pay a foreign legal secretary $150,000 per year, the new weighted lottery system prioritizes your application over an application for a foreign AI researcher who earns much more.

It’s difficult to say why the Administration rolled out the new $100,000 surcharge in this way. It seems likely that the speed of the rollout was intentional; if the Administration had provided even two weeks’ notice, companies would have rushed to file new applications before the deadline. But, given that intentionality, it is hard to understand why the Administration didn’t foresee the inevitable consequences of sloppy drafting – in cost, heartache, and legal bills – and work to prevent them.

Who was at fault for this? We’ll have to wait for the memoirs and tell-alls to be released. The official White House ‘Rapid Response 47’ Twitter account offered an interesting theory: “Corporate lawyers and others with agendas are creating a lot of FAKE NEWS around President Trump’s H-1B Proclamation.”

The White House didn’t mean to include Statutes of Liberty in its criticism, and properly so. We don’t traffic in fake news. We’re real advertisers.

Readers are, as always, invited to ask questions, real or fake,, and we will do our best to respond.

This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Taryn Druge, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

Our immigration system is, in the main, funded by immigrants rather than tax dollars. Nearly 90% of immigration benefits applications – green card applications, work permit applications, the new asylum application, H-1B petitions, you name it – come with checks or money orders attached. Soon – on October 28, 2025 – that venerable system will come to an end. Inevitably, many people will miss the memo, and enormous numbers of applications will be returned to sender. The purpose of this sponsored post is to diminish that number slightly, and to offer a guide on how to make payments using the new system.

Method 1: ACH Transaction Using Form G-1650

The first method for paying via bank transfer, using Form G-1650. To do this, you have to hold a bank account – either checking or savings – at a U.S. bank. You have to provide the routing and account numbers for that bank account, and you have to sign a piece of paper authorizing the transfer of a specified sum of money. (If those elements sound familiar to you, that’s because they are the key characteristics of a check.) Use a computer to complete the form, print it, sign it, and attach it to your benefits application.

Interestingly, USCIS notes that you may need to contact your bank to permit USDHS to debit funds by ACH, and so it would be wise to speak to your bank to ensure that the Agency Location Codes – at this date, 7001010330, 7001010331, 7001010335, and 7001010390 – are authorized for debits.

Method 2: Credit Card Authorization Using Form G-1450

The second method is to authorize a credit card payment using Form G-1450. To do this, you have to have a working credit card, debit card, or prepaid debit card. Use a computer to complete the form, print it, sign it, and attach it to the benefits application.

USCIS currently notes that it only accepts credit card payments for payments to the USCIS Service Centers or USCIS Lockboxes. Currently, those two types of offices accept the overwhelming majority of payments, but some payments are made directly to the USCIS Field Offices – e.g., applications for emergency advance parole. It is unclear how those payments will be handled, but the current Policy Manual states that either a check or Form G-1450 will be acceptable.

Method 3: Request a Waiver Using Form G-1651

The third (and somewhat questionable) method is to attach a check or money order made out to “U.S. Department of Homeland Security” and request a waiver of the electronic payment requirement via Form G-1651. We can’t provide you with a copy of that form. USCIS promised to provide it by August 29, 2025, but they haven’t done so. USCIS says that these will be the acceptable categories for an exemption:

• Individuals who do not have access to banking services or electronic payment systems;
• Electronic disbursement would cause undue hardship, as contemplated in 31 CFR Part 208;
• National security or law enforcement related activities where non-EFT transactions are necessary or desirable; and
• Other circumstances as determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, as reflected in regulations or other guidance.

Whether these exemptions are real or not will depend on the bureaucratic apparatus. The biggest category by far is individuals who do not have access to banking services or electronic payment systems, which includes many immigrants. (Without a social security number, it is difficult to open a bank account.) USCIS may allow such applicants to pay via check or money order, attaching a Form G-1651; or USCIS may argue that the availability of prepaid debit cards over the counter means that everyone has effective access to electronic payment systems.

Our view is that this change is likely to make it harder for many people to apply for benefits on their own. Of course, as lawyers, we think it’s generally advisable to engage counsel to represent you before USCIS. We will have no trouble adapting to the new payment system. But this is just another little layer of complexity which will make an already complex system even more challenging for ordinary people to navigate – and, as such, we think it’s an unwelcome change.

This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Taryn Druge, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.

Our little law office is hiring for two positions: Attorney and Legal Intern (Fall Semester). The details and tips on how to apply are below, in Q&A style.

Q: Hiring, eh? How much cash on the barrel?

A: Depends on the position. The Attorney position comes with a starting salary of $75,000, with guaranteed bonuses if you meet fairly achievable revenue targets. Those bonuses are $20,000 and $25,000, respectively, so the range of compensation is $75,000 – $120,000 per year. The Law Clerk position is paid hourly, and the amount depends on your background. (Certain local law schools won’t give you class credit if we pay you. We prefer to pay you, but we can forgo paying you if that’s what you need.)

Q: What? I thought that lawyers dove into piles of gold coins all day, like Scrooge McDuck!

A: It depends. On Wall Street, we are reliably informed that big law firm partners can make more than $15,000,000 per year – more than the bankers who pay them! Immigration lawyers are much more modestly compensated.

Q: Why should I work for you? ICE pays a $50K starting bonus and I want to deport illegals with my absolute boys!

A: We offer great benefits and a wonderful place to work.

Generous Benefits
We offer extremely generous benefits – better than every local nonprofit, including paid parental leave, 70% of health insurance / vision / dental covered from your first day on, FSA, retirement plan with a generous match – you name it, we offer it!

Easy Commute
Commuting into DC is for masochists. Working here isn’t. Our beautiful old office, built in 1870, is in the heart of Falls Church. We have plenty of free parking and a verdant, wooded landscape around our building.

Helping People in Need
Our clients come from all walks of life. Some come from vulnerable circumstances. You’ll work with them, and you’ll make a huge difference for them.

Collegial Environment
We pride ourselves doing cases one at a time. You won’t be forced to take cases. Instead, you’ll evaluate cases on your own, and build your own docket within the firm based on your own capacity and interests. We offer both independence and mentorship for new lawyers.

Q: Do you offer Work from Home?

A: No. Why? Because, as noted, we work with many people who come from vulnerable circumstances. These clients are best served by meeting with you in person. We are unwilling to compromise on this point, because, shorn of the verbiage, WFH means telling poor people to go pound sand.

Q: You don’t sound fun.

A: But in reality, I’m actually very fun, relaxed, and easy-going.

Q: How do I apply?

A: Email James at [email protected]. Send a CV and a cover letter.

Q: What are the requirements for each position?

A: For Attorney, we require a bar license and a JD. We’re happy to hire new lawyers. Spanish fluency is a big plus. Immigration experience is, of course, a plus too.

A(2): For Legal Intern, we require that you be enrolled at a local law school. That’s it! We’re here to help with your education and pay you a decent wage.

Questions about the jobs? Ask in the comments. We’ll respond, just like we always do.