Business Immigration Insights

A year ago, we blogged about the changes we saw coming in 2018 for U.S. employers and their employees under the April 2017 Buy American / Hire American executive order.  Though widespread across visa and green card categories, those changes have all amounted to increasing obstacles for U.S. companies to hire, retain and sponsor foreign nationals.  H‑1B workers, their H‑4 spouses, F‑1 students, TN professionals under NAFTA (to be replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, once approved by Congress), and L‑1 managers and specialists who transfer into U.S ...

In a continuation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”)’s crackdown on fraud among the foreign student population, ICE established and ran “The University of Farmington” in the Detroit suburbs.  As a result, the government indicted eight individuals for conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit.  At least 600 foreign nationals obtained fraudulent student visas through ICE’s undercover operation, which had no instructors or classes that would enable students to pursue a course of study.  Recruiters actively identified and helped enroll foreign nationals into the “university” and helped them obtain documentation that was required in order to seek work authorization from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”).  Students who enrolled in the “university” also face potential civil and criminal penalties if the government can prove they knew they would not attend classes or pursue a course of study.

The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) announced today that the final rule amending DHS regulations governing H-1B cap-subject petitions will be published in the Federal Register on January 31, 2019, and will become effective on April 1, 2019.

The new rule implements the electronic registration requirement, but suspends it for the FY2020 H-1B cap season. The rule also reverses the order in which the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) will select cap subject H-1B petitions.  USCIS will first select, in a random lottery, a sufficient number ...

The Visa Bulletin is released monthly by the Department of State and is used to determine when a sponsored foreign national can submit the final step of the green card process. The complete visa bulletin can be found here.

Below is a summary of the February Visa Bulletin, including Final Action Dates and changes from the previous month.

• China: EB-1 moves forward two months to February 8, 2017, EB-2 advances two months to October 1, 2015, and EB-3 advances three weeks to July 1, 2015
• India: EB-1 advances two months to February 8, 2017, EB-2 creeps forward five days to April 6, 2009, and EB-3 ...

Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP is pleased to announce the addition of Natalie Tynan to its national labor and employment practice. Tynan joins the firm’s immigration group as a senior attorney in Washington.

Tynan joins the firm after more than eleven years with the US Department of Homeland Security. She has served in various roles, including special assistant with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s Office of Policy and Strategy, where she was responsible for implementing executive orders and agency programs, and as chief of adjudications for USCIS Service Center ...

In August 2017, rumors began circulating that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was denying applications for advance parole if the applicant had departed the US before the application was approved.

Soon after these reports surfaced, USCIS officially confirmed the change, which was implemented without formal announcement or advance notice of any kind.  Since then, USCIS has indiscriminately applied the policy, including to those who traveled with their existing valid advance paroles (for example, while their renewals were pending) or on valid “dual intent” visas ...

The issues discussed in our earlier blog post on EB-1 backlogs have been expanded into a full article. The article can be found here.

The Visa Bulletin is released monthly by the Department of State and is used to determine when a sponsored foreign national can submit the final step of the green card process. The complete visa bulletin can be found here.

Below is a summary of the January Visa Bulletin, including Final Action Dates and changes from the previous month.

• China: EB-1 advances three and a half months to December 15, 2016, EB-2 creeps ahead one month to August 1, 2015, and EB-3 stalls at June 8, 2015
• India: EB-1 also advances three and a half months to December 15, 2016, EB-2 freezes at April 1, 2009, and EB-3 remains ...

An H-1B cap registration proposal has been in the works since 2011, but it may have been President Trump’s Buy American and Hire American (“BAHA”) executive order that finally created the right climate to push the proposal as far as it has now come.  In its proposed rule, published in the Federal Register on December 3, 2018, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) describes two major changes it seeks to implement to the H-1B cap selection process, beginning in 2019.

First, the proposed rule requires employers to submit a registration within a specific timeframe for each ...

As mentioned in our December Visa Bulletin post, the employment-based first preference (EB-1) category remains backlogged for all countries. Despite previous expectations, it appears that the backlog is here to stay. The Department of State’s Charlie Oppenheim recently told the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) that the Final Action dates for the EB-1 category would reach June 1, 2018 (for all countries except China and India) within the next eight to twelve months. If this prediction proves true, the EB-1 category will never become current this fiscal year ...