CHICAGO, IL. — (ARAB NEWSWIRE) — THE LAW OFFICES OF KAMELI & ASSOCIATES announces that on December 23, 2021, has filed a complaint against the U.S. government on behalf of an Iranian national seeking to challenge the U.S. government’s designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization and its implementation of the same as it pertains to U.S. immigration law. Doe v. Biden (US District Court, District of Columbia, Case Number 21-cv-3356)
In April 2019, the U.S. government designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, with the purpose of serving U.S. interests by continuing to isolate Iran and its government.
In practice, this designation has already been utilized to completely bar thousands of Iranian nationals from obtaining visas to enter the U.S. Such bars are founded in the Immigration and Nationality Act’s (INA) strict bars to admissibility to the U.S. under the terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds (TRIG).
The TRIG bars are extremely broad and can encompass any individual that may have had any relationship of any kind with a terrorist organization (thus the IRCG), including having provided support to such an organization. More importantly, the TRIG bars include little to no substantive exceptions or waivers even in the context of involuntary or conscripted involvement with a terrorist organization.
In Iran, service in the military is mandatory for males, with limited exceptions. Importantly, the Iranian males so conscripted into service are given no choice as to the branch of military to which they are assigned. What this means is that often the country’s best and brightest youth are assigned to the IRGC – again without any individual choice in the matter.
In addition, the broad scope of the TRIG bars to admissibility, and the law behind the designation of terrorist organizations as applicable to visa eligibility, permit U.S. government officials to apply the TRIG bars to Iranian nationals for any involvement with the IRCG dating back decades – long before the U.S. government’s 2019 designation. This might mean that an Iranian male with prior experience with the IRGC may be affected by the TRIG bar even for his role as a cook or a non-combat medic.
The unintentional (or intentional) consequences of such designation are now being borne by tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen and permanent resident family members of Iranian nationals who are no longer eligible for visas to the U.S. In many cases, U.S. citizen family members have been patiently waiting years for immigrant visas quotas to move forward in order for their immediate family members to be able to join them in the U.S. Many of these same individuals were forced to wait through years of the former travel bans implemented and maintained by the Trump administration from 2016 to 2020, only to have a new – and potentially permanent – bar to admissibly scuttle plans for family reunification. In many circumstances, U.S. visas are being offered to spouses and children of Iranian males, while they are refused with no prospects of future relief. This has and continues to create impossible decisions regarding life-altering choices, while essentially promoting the fracturing of family units.
The designation also works to severely reduce the immigration of Iran’s highly educated workforce to the U.S., which for years has boosted the economic interests of the U.S. For example, medical professionals, engineers, and professors whose potential employment in the U.S. has been found to have been in the U.S.’s “national interest” by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services itself, are nonetheless now being routinely denied visas to the U.S. for prior, mandatory involvement with the IRGC.
In the same vein, the designation now bars Iranian national entrepreneurs and investors from obtaining visas to the U.S., effectively acting to discourage foreign national investment in the U.S.
Taher Kameli indicated that “K&A notes that it takes no position regarding the political relationship between the U.S. and Iran and the motivations underlying U.S. government’s designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. However, the implementation of the TRIG bars without substantive waivers relating to involuntary service and/or pre-designation involvement has created confusion and uncertainty and an ever-increasing problem applicable to hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and U.S. employers. The current lawsuit filed by K&A seeks to help mitigate such increasing problems.”
About The Law Offices of Kameli & Associates
The Law Offices of Kameli & Associates is a law firm based in Chicago, Illinois. We provide a broad range of legal services at a global level to our corporate and individual clients by representing them in litigations related to SEC investigation, EB-5/EB5 issues, business and securities litigations, as well as international legal conflicts. Learn More: http://kameli.com/ and https://kamelilawgroup.com/
Media Contact
Law Offices of Kameli & Associates
Viktoria Gerzhyk, Marketing Analyst
vgerzhyk@kameli.com
+1 (312) 233-1000
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