'Preposterous' Immigration Caseloads Create Problems for 2nd Circuit
The federal appeals court based in New York City is struggling to handle immigration appeals from small law firms ill-equipped to devote substantial resources to the matters.
The number of immigration appeals has recently quintupled because of changes in the process, Adam Liptak writes in his Sidebar column for the New York Times.
That’s a strain for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where many of the appeals are handled by smaller firms with “preposterous caseloads,” Liptak writes. In the spring of 2005, seven small immigration firms each had more than 100 appeals pending in the court, according to a study published in The New York Law School Law Review.
Lawyer Frank Liu has filed more than 50 appeals in federal courts in the last three years. He told the Times that he charges a flat fee of $2,500. Large law firms, on the other hand, often charge $100,000 or more for an appeal.
Liu’s volume business has landed him in trouble. The 2nd Circuit’s disciplinary committee is considering whether Liu’s work was “seriously deficient,” the story says.
Liu himself says he has stopped handling federal appeals. “Personally, I feel very ashamed, of course, in being mentioned,” he said. “I ventured into an area I found later was very demanding. I was probably not qualified to do the job.”
Appeals from the nation’s immigration courts go directly to federal appeals courts, bypassing federal trial courts under legislative changes that curtailed their power to grant habeas relief, the ABA Journal reported in its November 2006 article “Asylum Ordeals.” More immigration petitioners are claiming the streamlined immigration process is creating problems of fundamental fairness and due process.
