The Supreme Court unanimously resurrected a federal law struck down by an appeals court that made it a felony to encourage people to come to or stay illegally in the United States.
The May 7 ruling was a dramatic victory for the Trump administration, which had urged the high court to reverse a 2018 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. President Donald Trump, who has made immigration his signature issue, also favors reducing both illegal and legal immigration, along with cracking down on illegal aliens.
The problem, according to the Supreme Court, was that the lower court selected activist groups to dominate arguments against the law and then accepted their reasons for why it should be invalidated, even though the defendant herself did not raise those same concerns in her defense.
San Jose, California-based immigration consultant Evelyn Sineneng-Smith was accused in 2010 of duping illegal aliens into paying her fees to file frivolous applications for visas and encouraging them to stay in the country unlawfully. Her business catered to Filipinos unlawfully present in the United States who worked in the home health care field.
Prosecutors said Sineneng-Smith cheated her clients out of more than $3 million by knowingly filing futile applications after the legal deadline of April 30, 2001, for a now-defunct program run by immigration authorities that was supposed to lead to permanent resident status. She was sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment.
Section 1324 of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act makes it a felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment for anyone who “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.” The period behind bars doubles if he or she acted “for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.”
read more here: https://www.theepochtimes.com/supreme-court-rebuffs-activists-reinstates-ban-on-encouraging-illegals-to-stay-in-us_3345769.html
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