American Immigration Lawyers Association

Matthew D. Baxter, 53, of Huntingdon Valley, an immigration lawyer, died of liver failure caused by side effects of cancer treatment Thursday, Sept. 15, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Baxter, who was a past president of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and who served on the board of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society for more than 15 years, represented a significant number of clients on a pro bono basis, his wife, Bonnie Allyn Barnett, said.

Of Rashid Javed, this much is known: He sneaked into the United States from Pakistan a decade ago, settled in Jersey City, and will likely be a guest of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for some time. His real name may - or may not - be Sajjad Ashraf. And he may - or may not - have been born in the United States. In post-Sept. 11 America, cases such as Javed's are under vigorous scrutiny. Nationwide, judges and lawyers, mindful that some terrorists had arrived illegally years earlier, are dealing with the legacy of immigration laws that used to be loosely enforced.

To survive in the land of milk and honey, illegal aliens had to learn how to duck around corners and disappear fast. Now, the tormentor - the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service - is saying, "Trust me," to its former prey. Today a new immigration law that offers amnesty to an estimated 2 million to 4 million illegal aliens, who have lived here since before Jan. 1, 1982, goes into effect, and experts in the immigration field say it's not a ruse. "This is no trick. It's a real program, not an effort to lure people in and then deport them," said Lawrence H. Rudnick, a Philadelphia immigration lawyer and chairman of local chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association, at a news conference yesterday.

To survive in the land of milk and honey, illegal aliens had to learn how to duck around corners and disappear fast. Now, the tormentor - the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service - is saying "Trust me," to its former prey. Today a new immigration law that offers amnesty to an estimated two million to four million illegal aliens, who have lived here since before Jan. 1, 1982, goes into effect, and experts in the immigration field say it's not a ruse. "This is no trick.

IN JUNE 2006, men in military clothes grabbed Maria, kidnapping her as she slept in a church shelter in Angola, bound and blindfolded her and dragged her away. They beat and raped her, and interrogated her about her boyfriend's human-rights work. Maria eventually escaped to the United States, where she sought asylum. But more than four years went by before a judge in Philadelphia heard her testimony. Separately in Philadelphia, "Esther," from Ghana, overstayed her tourist visa, fell in love with a naturalized U.S. citizen and married him in 2006.

On the surface, last week's Supreme Court ruling on a California deportation case focused on obscure legal technicalities that few Americans would understand, much less care about. In fact, the high court decision should have no significant impact on most immigrants facing deportation orders, immigration officials said. It's the message behind the ruling that alarms immigration lawyers and immigrant group leaders. The ruling has a "chilling effect on freedom of speech," said Philadelphia immigration lawyer Joe Hohenstein.

Attorney Karren A. DeSeve is taking a "busman's holiday" in Miami to help Haitian refugees gain asylum in the United States. DeSeve is a partner in the Philadelphia law firm of Baumann, DeSeve and Landau, which specializes in immigration. But she will be working in Miami this week as a volunteer, answering a call for help from the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The status of some 13,000 Haitians seeking to immigrate to the United States has been the focus of a continuing legal battle between the Bush administration and a variety of human rights and religious organizations - among them Amnesty International, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the U.S. Catholic Conference and the American Jewish Committee.

ATLANTA - Mexico and 10 other countries have joined the legal fight against Georgia's tough new immigration law, warning that the strict crackdown could jeopardize close ties between the United States and its Latin American neighbors. The nations filed briefs late Wednesday in support of civil-liberties groups that asked a federal judge to declare Georgia's new law unconstitutional and block it from taking effect. The filing marks a new phase in the legal showdown that has pitted Georgia's attorneys against groups that had threatened to challenge the law even before it was adopted by lawmakers.

The nation's chief immigration officer yesterday invited lawyers with immigration concerns to hold their 1992 convention on the now-abandoned southern end of Ellis Island. He was met with murmurs. The immigration chief said the abandoned end of Ellis could also become "an educational center, for foreign students when they come to this country, or for American students when they go abroad. "How about a week on Ellis Island?" for such students, he said. He was met with outright laughter.

John S. Manos, 84, of Logan Square, a lawyer and an activist in the Greek community in Philadelphia, died of a heart attack Tuesday at Pennsylvania Hospital. As a lawyer for more than 55 years, Mr. Manos helped many Greek immigrants receive legal status and citizenship and establish successful businesses, his family said. He and his future wife, Elizabeth Nicholas, met when she retained his legal services to bring her Greek family, living in Brazil, to the United States. Mr. Manos was a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and taught immigration law at the Temple University School of Law. A lifelong member of St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral near Washington Square, he was the cathedral's counsel for 40 years and was involved in the construction of two cathedral-sponsored senior housing developments.

Matthew D. Baxter, 53, of Huntingdon Valley, an immigration lawyer, died of liver failure caused by side effects of cancer treatment Thursday, Sept. 15, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Baxter, who was a past president of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and who served on the board of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society for more than 15 years, represented a significant number of clients on a pro bono basis, his wife, Bonnie Allyn Barnett, said.

ATLANTA - Mexico and 10 other countries have joined the legal fight against Georgia's tough new immigration law, warning that the strict crackdown could jeopardize close ties between the United States and its Latin American neighbors. The nations filed briefs late Wednesday in support of civil-liberties groups that asked a federal judge to declare Georgia's new law unconstitutional and block it from taking effect. The filing marks a new phase in the legal showdown that has pitted Georgia's attorneys against groups that had threatened to challenge the law even before it was adopted by lawmakers.

IN JUNE 2006, men in military clothes grabbed Maria, kidnapping her as she slept in a church shelter in Angola, bound and blindfolded her and dragged her away. They beat and raped her, and interrogated her about her boyfriend's human-rights work. Maria eventually escaped to the United States, where she sought asylum. But more than four years went by before a judge in Philadelphia heard her testimony. Separately in Philadelphia, "Esther," from Ghana, overstayed her tourist visa, fell in love with a naturalized U.S. citizen and married him in 2006.

As the U.S. Senate heard testimony Wednesday on legislation to toughen proof-of-identity requirements for driver's licenses, immigration lawyers and officials of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation met in Philadelphia to scrutinize the process of deciding who gets a license here. "Driver's licenses can be the keys to the kingdom for terrorists bent on death and destruction," Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "States have a responsibility to ensure licenses are tamper-proof and issued only to people whose identity and legal status can be verified.

John S. Manos, 84, of Logan Square, a lawyer and an activist in the Greek community in Philadelphia, died of a heart attack Tuesday at Pennsylvania Hospital. As a lawyer for more than 55 years, Mr. Manos helped many Greek immigrants receive legal status and citizenship and establish successful businesses, his family said. He and his future wife, Elizabeth Nicholas, met when she retained his legal services to bring her Greek family, living in Brazil, to the United States. Mr. Manos was a past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and taught immigration law at the Temple University School of Law. A lifelong member of St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral near Washington Square, he was the cathedral's counsel for 40 years and was involved in the construction of two cathedral-sponsored senior housing developments.

As an immigration lawyer, Matthew I. Hirsch sees a wide variety of international clients in his Wayne office. When Miguel Materin, an eye cancer specialist from Argentina, received a job offer from Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, Hirsch handled the paperwork that would permit him to work. "He has really taken care of us," said Materin, who now lives in Bala Cynwyd with his wife and four children. "Everything he told me would happen, it happened. I'm very thankful. " Hirsch said people often ask him how an immigration lawyer can make a living in Wayne.

A Syrian immigrant, Khattar Aizooky said he felt a chill while being fingerprinted and questioned by the U.S. government last month, a decade after leaving his authoritarian homeland. It reminded him of Syria. "This is one of the most open and accepting societies," said the 33-year-old Pittsburgh physician. "We hate to see it changing for the worse. " Tomorrow is the next deadline for thousands more men from selected Middle Eastern, African and Asian countries - almost all of them Muslim - to undergo "special registration" by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

All Pennsylvania driver's licenses or photo identification cards issued to foreigners will be stamped "noncitizen" and will be timed to expire with entry visas, according to antiterrorism provisions of a law signed yesterday by Gov. Schweiker. The new requirements are part of a push by the Governor's Office to tighten security statewide while also adopting elements of federal homeland-security measures enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington. The new law imposes a number of changes, including criminal background checks for commercial truck drivers ferrying hazardous or flammable materials, which recently became federal law. It also gives the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation the authority to invalidate a driver's license once a resident moves to another state.

For immigrants already facing more scrutiny after Sept. 11, here's something new that has them scratching their heads: Prompted by security fears after the terror attacks, the Philadelphia Marriage License Bureau has been routinely checking immigration papers of foreign nationals and effectively refusing marriage licenses for people it thinks are undocumented. Register of Wills Ronald R. Donatucci, who said he imposed the rule on his own authority shortly after Sept. 11, termed it a response to President Bush's "call for more vigilance" and an effort to thwart illegal aliens from marrying just to stay in the country.

To the dismay of civil rights groups, the Justice Department said yesterday that young Middle Eastern men from nations with active al-Qaeda cells would be expelled first in a new U.S. crackdown on illegal immigrants who have ignored deportation orders. "Terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda within the United States are a continuing threat to Americans," said a Justice official who confirmed the move but requested anonymity. "We will continue to focus investigative, intelligence-gathering and enforcement operations on individuals in the U.S. from countries with highly active al-Qaeda networks to protect Americans.