A Son's Quest

by Marlon Viloria

It was almost two years ago when I conceptualised the idea of writing a novel. One day, my elder daughter Valerie and I were walking, on our way to school of my younger daughter Jessica when I mentioned to her that I was thinking of writing a novel. Valerie seemed to have liked the idea and she encouraged me to do so. From then on, it never left my mind.

Rewinding a few months’ back, I was working away from home at the time and I was getting fed up travelling back and forth to Germany. The company I was working with as a consultant offered me an extension of my contract for another year but I already knew I could no longer accept it. Although the job itself was interesting and challenging, the travelling part every weekend was taking its toll and becoming unbearable. It was becoming a torture both physically and mentally, aggravated much further when flight was delayed due to a number of reasons, thus diminishing the joy of looking forward to seeing my family again. Believe me, I have experienced them all.

A Magsingaleno’s book on ineffective immigration counsel published

by MVP

Atty. Tipon with his new book

Atty. Emmanuel S. Tipon’s book on “Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in Removal (Deportation) Proceedings” has been published by Thomson-Reuters, the world’s largest law book publishing firm. The work is published as a series of annotations in Volumes 58, 59 and 60 of American Law Reports. It will later be printed as a stand alone volume. Atty. Tipon’s father is from Magsingal and Atty. Tipon grew up in Magsingal during the war. He is a regular contributor to this web publication.

Atty. Tipon pointed out that in criminal cases, a defendant who loses a case may claim that his lawyer was ineffective and move to reopen the case because an accused has a constitutional right under the Sixth Amendment to effective assistance of counsel. In civil cases, there is no such right of a losing party. However, immigration law is unique in that it is the only civil litigation where a litigant can have a “second bite of the apple” -  by claiming that he or she was a victim of ineffective assistance of counsel – and reopen the proceedings.