Noted immigration attorney George Crimarco is assuring Jamaicans that they have no need to panic about new travel restrictions imposed by United States President Donald Trump.

“None of these rules apply to Jamaicans,” Crimarco said on Friday, adding that the information being circulated, mostly via the Internet, is not true.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls from people reporting incidents at the airports, not to mention the fact that there is a lot of bogus news going around on the Internet saying Jamaicans are being targeted. I just saw one that said 380 Jamaicans were denied entry; all of that is rumour mongering,” Crimarco told the Jamaica Observer.

The rumours started swirling after Trump signed an executive order on January 27 placing a 90-day ban on nationals of seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — from entering the United States. The order also blocked for at least 120 days the arrival of refugees, while Syrian refugees were banned indefinitely.

The State Department has said that up to 60,000 people from the seven Muslim-majority countries had had their visas cancelled. A Justice Department attorney put that figure at closer to 100,000.

The ban has triggered demonstrations in the United States and other countries. On Friday, Seattle-based federal judge James Robart issued a nationwide order blocking the ban in what has been seen as the most severe legal blow to Trump’s executive order.

Hours later Trump slammed the decision as “ridiculous” and vowed it would be overturned.

On Friday, Crimarco — who has almost 30 years’ experience and runs his own full service immigration and nationality law firm in Florida and Jamaica — argued that the reason for the concerns raised among Jamaicans was that many of them who have United States green cards continue to live in Jamaica and operate under the assumption that if they travel to the US every six months and spend a week they can maintain their residency.

“There’s no basis for that in law,” he said. “When they give you a green card they intend for you to live in America. It’s not a reservation to come when you feel like coming. It’s not an insurance policy.”

He said that with the airports in the US now fully computerised, the authorities are better able to track arrivals and departures with more accuracy than before. As such, they are clamping down on the practice of green card holders staying out of the country for extended periods.

“This fallacy of Jamaicans thinking that they can come every six months and maintain their residency is going to be a problem, and it’s going to be a bigger problem as we go along,” Crimarco said.

However, he advised that while the airport officials may be able to take away “the physical plastic green card, they cannot rescind your residency”.

“There are only two options that the officials at the airports have,” he explained. “They can hand you an I-407 form and say, ‘this is a form you’re going to sign to abandon your residency’. and they can put you under pressure to do it, but they cannot force you to sign that form.”

The other option, Crimarco said, is that “they can place you in proceedings in front of a US immigration judge”, and that would require them to prove to the judge “that you have abandoned your residency”.

He cautioned green card holders against signing the form under duress and on advice from the airport authorities that they can return to Jamaica and reapply for the green card here. “Nutten nuh go so, because once you’ve given it up, you’ve given it up,” said the attorney whose website states that he has represented clients from more than 90 countries before the US Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, US Department of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review, and US Department of State.

However, Crimarco said that green card holders who intend to be out of the US for six months can apply for a re-entry permit.

“This permit allows you to stay out of the country for up to two years without coming back, but the problem with it is that you have to be physically in the United States when you apply for it. It cannot be applied for from abroad. You have to be here when you send the application in. [However] you don’t have to stay here until the application has been processed,” Crimarco explained, adding that his law firm has helped a number of people with this procedure.

He said that the application can be renewed after the first two years have expired. However, a third application would push the authorities to question whether the applicant really wants to keep his/her residency.

Crimarco is a member of the Florida Bar, the American Bar Association, American Immigration Lawyers Association, Dade County Bar Association, and District of Columbia Bar Association.

He is admitted to practise in the US Tax Court and the US Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

He earned his BA in accounting in 1976 from William Patterson College and his Juris Doctor from the University of Miami Law School.

Crimarco, who graduated from the University of Miami in 1988, made it clear that the information he shared was general in nature and each person may have their own unique issues that may or may not apply.

He also advised that anyone facing an immigration problem “should always seek competent legal advice from a lawyer, not from a friend who knows a ‘ting’ or is not licensed to give reliable information”.

He noted that the US Supreme Court recently ruled in a case that immigration and nationality law is extremely complex and not even lawyers who only have a general knowledge of the law should be relied on.