Posted on December 19, 2017 in Immigration

In the recent months since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began to crack down hard on all those lacking status, the plight of the United States’ immigration courts has come into sharp relief. A shortage of judges has led many to be unaware of the answer to the simple question of what an immigration judge even does—his or her function is quite different than the run-of-the-mill criminal or civil court judge. It can potentially change your approach to your removal case if you understand the true role of an appointed immigration judge.

Origins and Loyalties

Immigration judges are appointed by the Attorney General, who is the head of the Justice Department. The Justice Department is also the federal agency which houses the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees immigration matters at the basic and intermediate levels—immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) are both governed by EOIR rules.

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 Posted on December 19, 2017 in Personal Injury

How often do accidents involving all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) occur in DuPage County? When and where do most of these collisions occur, and are certain age groups at greater risk of being involved in a crash?

Motor vehicles come in many different forms, from large trucks to motorcycles. According to the Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII), almost all vehicles that are self-propelled and capable of transporting at least one person are considered motor vehicles as long as they can exceed 25 miles per hour on paved surfaces and have safety features designed for “safe and practical street or highway use.”

Given these terms, is an ATV a motor vehicle? While it might not be safe beyond off-road use, many DuPage County residents make the mistake of assuming ATVs are safe to drive at high speeds on public roads, and crashes occur.

Thousands of ATV Crashes on Paved Public Roads

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 Posted on December 17, 2017 in Family Law

The way you spend your parenting time when your child is a toddler will be far different than when your child is a teenager. Since parenting time changes with different ages, it is important to understand how to make the best use of your time throughout every stage of your child’s life. Let’s take a closer look at how you can expect to spend your parenting time when your child is a toddler, in elementary school, and teenager.

Toddler

When your child is young, your parenting time may be spent teaching them how to speak and read. You may consider reading, playing educational games, or taking them to activities that allow them to socialize and meet other children. By doing so, you will prepare them for kindergarten.

During this stage in your child’s life, you will need to provide them with the most attention as they may not yet know the difference between right and wrong and are too young to stay out of dangerous situations.

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 Posted on December 12, 2017 in Immigration

An increasing number of people are traveling now than what used to be the case years ago; more people are enjoying other cultures and the people within them. Sometimes, love matches will result. If this does happen to you, you may be able to bring your future spouse to live in the United States with you, assuming you are able to obtain the right visa. While some people marry while abroad and then apply for a family-based immigrant visa, others bring their fiance(e) to the U.S. using a K visa.

What is a K Visa?

A K visa is a specific type of non-immigrant (not immigrant) visa intended for use by people whose entire purpose of coming to the United States on this particular trip is to marry a U.S. citizen. Many couples confuse the K visa with permanent residency, which can cause issues—holders of green cards may travel to and from the U.S. with relative impunity, but this is not the case with any kind of nonimmigrant visa (generally, nonimmigrant visa holders are restricted either to a finite number of entries or to a very short validity period for the visa itself).

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 Posted on December 12, 2017 in Personal Injury

When most DuPage County residents think about car accident risks, they consider some of the more common reasons that motor vehicle collisions take place. For instance, aggressive driving, distracted driving, and impaired driving often make the top of the list for frequent causes of traffic collisions. But what about car accidents that do not result from a driver’s reckless or careless behavior, but rather from a medical emergency?

According to a recent report from CNBC, safety technology upgrades in automobiles may soon be able to detect when a person is having a heart attack and thus may be able to prevent a severe or fatal crash.

Cars Reacting to Drivers’ Medical Emergencies

As the report explains, automobile manufacturers have been developing new forms of safety technology for decades, and “a new wave of safety technology is on the way—allowing cars to react to medical emergencies.” To be sure, both Ford and Toyota have begun work on developing “health sensors” that could be paired with “autonomous driving technology so that vehicles will be able to pull off the road and call for help if they determine a passenger is having either cardiac trouble or a diabetic event.”

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 Posted on December 05, 2017 in Immigration

There is perhaps no group more in immigration news in recent months than unaccompanied minors, especially those coming from Latin America. In the past few years, ever since an explosion of gang violence in Central and South America, a steady flood of unaccompanied minors has come to the border between the United States and Mexico, seeking asylum or other forms of relief. However, many have found not relief, but suffering of a different kind.

Migration Statistics Show Trends

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) states that while children from all over the world immigrate or seek asylum in the United States, as many as 75 percent of them have been boys from El Salvador, Mexico, and Honduras, at least since 2009. There are multiple reasons for this, none of which have to do with any kind of gang-related or otherwise malicious motives, as has sometimes been alleged.

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 Posted on December 05, 2017 in Personal Injury

Do graduated licenses help to reduce teen car accident deaths in DuPage County and throughout the state of Illinois? According to a recent article in the chtribune, since 2007—shortly before the state instituted its graduated license program—rates of teen car crash deaths have declined by more than 50 percent. That data comes from the Illinois Secretary of State office, and experts cite the graduated license program as the reason for fewer traffic fatalities involving teen drivers in the state.

What should you know about current teen car accident fatalities and the graduated license requirements under Illinois law?

Teen Motor Vehicle Death Rates Decline By Half in the Last Decade

In 2008, Illinois began requiring teens to abide by graduated licensing laws. According to a recent statement from Secretary of State Jesse White, the graduated license program should receive much of the credit for the stark reduction in teen motor vehicle deaths over the last 10 years.

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 Posted on November 30, 2017 in Family Law

When you are going through a divorce, the last thing you need is your future ex-spouse stalking you. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence and can add stress and even more discomfort to the divorce process. If you believe your future ex-spouse is stalking you during your divorce, read on.

What is Stalking?

A pattern of behavior that makes you feel nervous, scared, harassed, or in danger is defined as stalking. Your future ex-spouse may be stalking you if they are:

• Always calling, texting, and emailing you even when you ask them not to
• Constantly driving by your home
• Running into you in public on a regular basis
• Using social media to follow and friend your social media followers and friends in order to keep an eye on you
• Spreading rumors or publishing personal information about you on social media
• Giving you gifts on birthdays and holidays when you do not want them

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 Posted on November 25, 2017 in Family Law

A guardian has the same responsibilities to a child as a child’s biological parent. An individual may obtain legal guardianship of a child in Illinois because a child’s biological parents cannot properly care for them, a child’s biological parents passed away in a tragic accident, a minor child is living with a disability, or senior adults do not have the ability to care for themselves.

Types of Guardianships

In Illinois, an individual can become a permanent legal guardian, a guardian ad litem, a standby guardian, or a short-term guardian. Let’s take a closer look at how each of these four types of guardianships are defined.

• Permanent Legal Guardian: A permanent legal guardian has the same duties any biological parent would have and must provide the child with food, shelter, clothing, and education, and the other necessities of life.

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 Posted on November 23, 2017 in Immigration

The United States has governorship over a handful of territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam, referring to them as insular areas. A U.S. insular area is defined as a nominally self-governing territory which looks to the United States for guidance and various benefits. Given the horrific situation in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, questions about the lawful status of the Puerto Ricans have been asked by those not in the know, especially in regard to the possibility of relocating to the U.S. mainland.

Citizenship and Relocation

As of 2017, the U.S. Congress had extended citizenship to the residents of all inhabited U.S. possessions except for American Samoa, which is an unincorporated territory (a territory must incorporate, or organize in a certain way, for its people to be eligible for citizenship). Thus, residents of all other U.S. possessions such as Puerto Rico, the Northern Marianas Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have the same citizenship rights as anyone born on the U.S. mainland. The Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau are sometimes named as U.S. possessions, but this is erroneous—they are sovereign states and their nationals are citizens of their respective countries, with no claim to U.S. citizenship.

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