What happens when tough talk on immigration meets real-life policy shifts?

In this episode of Immigration Weekly, Rosanna Berardi breaks down the latest moves from the Trump administration – from ending open-ended stays for international students and limiting foreign journalists, to banning paper checks and drafting military judges into immigration courts.

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Transcript

Everyone’s talking about U.S. immigration law, but nobody really knows how it works. I’m Rosanna Berardi. I’m the daughter of an immigrant, a former immigration inspector at the border, university professor, and founder and managing partner of Berardi Immigration Law.

I’ve done nothing but U.S. immigration law for over 30 years, and it’s time to stop the misinformation on all sides. I’m going to tell you how it all works, the inside story. This is Immigration Weekly with Rosanna Berardi.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Immigration Weekly podcast with yours truly, Rosanna Berardi. I’ve been trying to record this on various platforms this week, and I’m just glad to be here and be with you all. It’s been an interesting time, obviously, since Inauguration Day, but what’s happening in the immigration world?

Trump’s Immigration Promises vs Reality

Well, there’s a million things we can talk about today, but what we’re seeing is a very concentrated effort right now of the Trump administration to fix immigration. Now, obviously, the president was elected on this platform. The majority of Americans, when they voted in November of 2024, said, we need to do something.

The borders are a mess. Cities are just spending so much money on illegals. Someone out there, please fix the U.S. immigration law. Biggest issue on the campaign trail, we’ve talked about this before. So what did Trump promise? Trump promised to fix immigration, the largest deportation in American history.

Well, guess what? That didn’t happen. Remember why?

International Students and Journalists

Due process. Due process. You can’t just tell people that are here to leave.

They’re entitled to their day in court, even if they’re U.S. citizens. We talk about that time and time again. So, you know, rather than just folding the cards up and forgetting about it, this is an administration that has, it’s like a dog with a bone.

They will not stop. They are maneuvering constantly on the immigration law and policy. And I’m going to talk about three things today that we’ve seen in the last three or four days.

Of course, these are all announced on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, because that’s what every immigration lawyer wants to do is figure out what the heck is going on. So let’s talk first about the international students. Now, international students, the government’s been all over international students.

I don’t quite understand. There’s about a million of them in the United States. I’ve represented international students for almost 30 years.

They’re a delight. It’s really hard to come to America. You need a lot of money as an international student.

You don’t get financial aid. You can’t take out government loans. It’s incredibly difficult to come here and stay.

Like I said, there’s about a million people in the United States under student status. People say, well, Rosanna, we don’t need them in the United States. We have plenty of our own students.

Maybe. What’s wrong with people from other countries? Aren’t we a melting pot?

Don’t we learn from other countries? Nonetheless, the immigration category for international students is called the F-1. It’s just a designation under the immigration law.

There’s also people that come in as exchange visitors. Those are called J-1s. Since the sands of time, if you came across the border, let’s just say you’re Canadian, you live in St. Catharines, you want to come to the University of Buffalo, you have your I-20, you’ve been accepted, your parents are going to pay tuition, you’re going to pay cash. You cross that border and you say, hey, I’m coming here to go to school. The officer will pull you aside, send you inside, and process your Form I-20. That’s your student paperwork.

They don’t give you an expiration date. They don’t say, okay, in May of 2029, when you graduate from your program at UB in nursing, you need to leave. Nope.

They give you something called D, like dog, slash S, like Sam. D-S. That stands for duration of status.

Duration of status is the government’s way of saying, hey, Canadian who’s coming to the University of Buffalo, you can stay here in the U.S. for the duration of your status or studies. Meaning, if you’re getting your bachelor’s degree, that’s great. Takes four years.

Maybe you’re going to get a master’s. I have some clients, bachelor’s, master’s, PhD. They’re here for a long time.

They’re here lawfully. They’re studying. They’re paying tuition.

They’re renting apartments. They’re paying a lot of money in the U.S. economy. So this concept of duration of status, duration of stay has been around since the sands of time.

Well, last week, end of August of 2025, the government came out and said, hey, we have an announcement. They didn’t write a policy memo on this one. They went to the federal register.

Now, if you know me, you know I always complain that the government dictates by executive orders. I don’t like them. This time they actually did it right.

When they’re going to make a change, the way that they do it, they say, attention, the federal register is the device in which they say, we’re going to make a change. Here’s what it’s going to be. And then they leave it open for comments.

So this went out at the end of August. They’re saying, no more D.S. Yeah, Rosanna, who cares? This is so nuanced and technical.

The reason you should care is that they’re saying when you’re done with your program, you’ve got to leave. If you want to do a master’s, you have to get another document. Why is this a big deal?

It’s a big deal for messaging. This administration is all about messaging all the time. The message is this.

We feel like this is loosey-goosey. We feel like people are hanging out too long. We want to button it up.

Do I think this is a major cause of concern? I always feel like the international students, why are you picking on them? However, I don’t have the government’s intelligence data information.

I have none of that. So maybe they’re justified, but this is a long departure from the U.S. immigration law. So what does this mean for international students?

Well, international students have to pay attention to the documentation they receive when they enter the U.S. They always have, always will. They know they’re guests in the United States. By ending this, this means they no longer have this open-ended stay.

They will now have a fixed date on their entry documents, and if they need to stay longer, if they want to do that master’s program or PhD, they have to file an extension through the mail with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or they have to exit the United States and re-enter if you’re a Canadian. Again, this is just tightening things up. It’s the government’s message.

Remember, this is an administration obsessed with messaging and saying, we said we’re going to do something, it’s not working out the way we wanted it to, but we’re going to, we’re still doing it, we’re going to do something else, we’re going to do immigration, immigration, immigration, over and over and over again. What does this mean? Students have to pay extra close attention to the expiration dates of their documents.

They’ve got to pay perhaps an extension fee to extend their stay, and if they don’t pay attention to this, they could wind up in trouble. Jail? No.

Immigration violation? Maybe. Once again, this is not final rule today.

This came out at the end of August. There is a 30-day window for the public comments, so lots of immigration lawyers, lots of immigration groups, lots of immigrant groups will submit their public comments, and then in the next 60 days, we might see the proposed paperwork requirements. I think if I had a magic ball, this one’s going to happen and be finalized by the end of 2025.

So again, if you’re a student coming in right now, you’re still going to get duration of status. What’s going to happen? Probably at the end of the year, that’s going to change.

It’s not going to apply retroactive. They’re not going to go back and look. They’re going to look forward.

And so the messaging here is really what we’re paying attention to. The Trump administration says, we’re going to fix immigration. Might not be what we promised to do.

That was harder than we thought. But here, international students, we’re going to make this a little bit harder. Once again, the overall messaging.

America’s tough on immigration. Not only was this messaging for international students, they also hit it for journalists. Media personnel have their own immigration categories.

Payment Changes and Immigration Court Backlog

So if you’re a reporter from the Toronto Globe and Mail, and you want to come to the United States to report on a story live from Buffalo, New York, you need a visa to do that. That’s called the I-visa. I like ice cream.

And again, journalists, reporters, and such had this D for dog slash S for Sam status. Government says in this Federal Register, nope, we don’t like this. Too many people roaming around.

The government is now limiting journalist stay to 240 days per year, max. If you’re Chinese, 90 days. Again, messaging.

We don’t want Chinese reporters roaming around the United States. The government is again, closing the gap. What does this all mean?

It means we have to pay attention. They’re changing some nuanced stuff here. All right.

So that’s students, that’s journalists, that’s messaging. Yesterday, we get this notice from the government. If we have filed a green card petition, or a work permit, or a citizenship application on your behalf, we 99.9% of the time attach a check, a paper check made out to the Department of Homeland Security, because the government charges fees to look at your paper to make a decision. Guess what? Government said no more checks. Too much fraud.

Fraud. So now every person that files an application either has to use an ACH, or money order, or a credit card. Again, Rosanna, who cares?

I have a credit card, not a big deal. Well, for an individual, not a huge deal. For a law firm that we’re writing checks all the time, now we have to monkey around with credit cards, and ACH payments, and wire transfers, and money orders on behalf of hundreds and hundreds of clients.

Clunky. What’s the notice period? By October 28th, no more paper checks.

Ouch. Why government? Why?

They said it’s fraud. They said it’ll reduce fraud. I don’t know.

Again, I’m not the government. I don’t know what they have with respect to this issue. But again, making it harder, making it harder, making it harder.

Finally, in the last week, I’m leaving the best for last. Now, boy, if there’s one part of the immigration puzzle that is a hot mess, it is the immigration court system. Immigration judges are employed by an agency called the Executive Office for Immigration Review, EOIR, in my world.

I worked as a government lawyer at the beginning of my career. I would go to immigration court in New York City, 26 Federal Plaza, every day for a year. And I would say, I’m Rosanna Browardy, Assistant District Counsel on behalf of the Immigration and Actualization Service.

I was the government lawyer. So cool. In court all the time.

Okay. So there’s immigration judges. It’s administrative courts, not criminal courts, not civil court.

So the rules of evidence are kind of murky. Sometimes they apply. Sometimes they don’t.

Anyway, in the immigration court, there are lawyers that represent the government. Right now, today, 2025, there are 3.7 million backlog cases. Who thinks we need more judges?

I do. Who got a billion dollars of funding? Not EOIR, not the immigration judges.

They gave that to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We have a massive problem right now, 3.7 million cases. Average processing time from a case beginning to end, 4.5 years, years, years. People are remaining in the U.S. while this is all happening. What’s going on? Well, there’s been a lot of controversy.

The administration’s fired some immigration judges. And yesterday, are you sitting down? They announced the Department of Justice will provide military judges to the Trump administration for immigration purposes.

They’re going to take military judges and make them immigration judges. There’s going to be hundreds of them in order to clear this backlog. Now, listen, I’m an entrepreneur.

I am all for creative problem solving. In theory, adding a few hundred more judges to the mix, great move. In reality, I’m worried, gravely concerned, worried, gravely concerned about the knowledge gap of a military judge with respect to immigration law.

Immigration law is complex. Most immigration judges were either government lawyers for many, many years or private practitioners like myself who appeared in immigration court for years and years. So lots and lots of experience.

To have the military judges step into this role, yes, it fills a need. Yes, the message is we’re fixing immigration. From a 10,000-foot view, again, I love this concept.

Give $100 billion to EOIR or give 3.7 million backlog cases to a private company like Amazon or Walmart. They would clear that jam up in weeks. Private industry, done.

Government dragging their feet. Why? I don’t know.

A lot of political reasons that I won’t get into. So this is another move of messaging. This is the government.

This is the Trump administration saying, we are not giving up on immigration. This is a hot mess. We are trying from every degree and angle to fix this.

Closing Thoughts

It is super difficult to keep up with this. Today, we talked about three main things that have happened. We’ve talked about the government narrowing the period of stay in which international students and journalists can stay in the U.S. We talked about the government no longer accepting paper checks, which is huge. And then finally, we talked about the DOJ providing military judges to work as immigration judges, A for effort, F for execution. These three things in total say, we’re not messing around. We’re going to drip, drip, drip on immigration until we do something that moves the needle.

I give this administration an A for effort. Man, oh man, are they trying every degree and angle. We can’t keep up with what’s hot off the presses today.

However, like most things, when you look closely, you’re like, I don’t know about this one. So there you have it. Three things going on in the immigration world.

Remember, this is all part of messaging. This administration is not messing around. Now, if you thought, wow, this was fascinating, please share this episode with your friends, subscribe, like, do all the things.

Until next time, we will see you and wish you the greatest of days. This was immigration weekly with Rosanna Berardi. Thanks for joining.

Be sure to connect with me, Rosanna Berardi on LinkedIn, or go to our law firm at berardiimmigrationlaw.com. And if you don’t want to miss the latest and greatest, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and share this with your friends.

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