World News
African immigrant applicants sue Biden Administration
12 Sudanese and Ethiopian families who are Diversity Visa lottery winners for FY-2022 have filed a lawsuit in the District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge the Biden administration’s unlawful withholding of their visa adjudications by preventing the reassignment of their interview locations away from US Embassies in Khartoum and Addis Ababa- 2 embassies that have not resumed routine visa processing.
The short case name for the lawsuit is Tesfaye v Blinken (1:22-cv-00411-CKK). The case has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, and the complaint can be found HERE.
Defendants in the lawsuit include Antony J. Blinken (U.S. Secretary of State ), Morgan D. Miles (Director of the Kentucky Consular Center), and Edward J. Ramotowski (Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs).
Modernly, the Diversity Visa lottery program is responsible for the largest percentage of African and Black immigration to the United States.
The Kentucky Consular Center’s policy denying Ethiopian and Sudanese DV-2022 selectees the opportunity to be reassigned to other US embassies that are open, forecloses their immigration paths. This is because under the Immigration and Nationality Act, DV selectees must be scheduled for immigrant visa interviews before the end of the fiscal year statutory deadline – September 30, 2022, absent a court order.
Following a very similar lawsuit, Hamad v Blinken, filed in December on behalf of Iraqi DV-2022 selectees, the State Department changed their interview reassignment policy with respect to Iraqi and Afghan selectees, making that lawsuit moot. Hamad plaintiffs, also represented by Morrison Urena, L.C., dismissed that lawsuit after all of their interview locations were reassigned.
Alexandra George, who represents Tesfaye v Blinken
Rafael Urena, who represents Tesfaye v Blinken
Curtis Lee Morrison, who represents Tesfaye v Blinken plaintiffs, said: “These plaintiffs have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become permanent residents. The U.S. has the opportunity to welcome them in and increase our diversity. Instead, the Biden Administration keeps deprioritizing diversity visa cases. If their visas are not issued by September 30, they lose a golden opportunity and so does the United States.”