Visa Lawyer Blog

Articles Posted in Work Visas

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To our loyal readers and clients, we wish you and your families very safe and happy holidays. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued trust and loyalty in our office. Our clients continue to inspire us with their stories of hope, courage, and innovation. Although it is a very challenging time for immigration law due to our current political climate, we believe that our executive and legislative branches will work together to find a solution to pressing issues that have remain unresolved for so many years. We hope that in the new year, members of Congress will begin talks to pass comprehensive immigration reform, including legislation to protect Dreamers from deportation. Whatever happens in the new year, we will be here every step of the way to help you achieve your immigration goals. See you in the new year!

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Over the course of the last few weeks, our attorneys have uncovered a disturbing trend in the adjudication of H-1B petitions (both cap subject and cap-exempt) that were upgraded to premium processing service in late October through November.

As previously reported on our blog, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has been aggressively issuing requests for evidence across the board for all H-1B petitions regardless of occupation and regardless of whether the beneficiary is seeking an H-1B visa for the first time, or an extension of their status. This drastic change was prompted in part by the enforcement of the President’s executive order “Buy American, Hire” in which the President called on the service to “ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid petition beneficiaries.” The result was that USCIS began to issue requests for evidence focusing on the beneficiary’s wage level, questioning the petitioner regarding why the beneficiary was being paid the entry level wage, instead of a higher wage if the beneficiary’s occupation was to be considered complex.

Premium Processing Upgrades

To add insult to injury, as of late, USCIS has been issuing a huge wave of denials for H-1B cases that were recently upgraded to premium processing. In the past, it was commonplace for H-1B petitions to be upgraded to premium processing, even where a response to a request for evidence was under review by USCIS. This fiscal year, however, was a bit different than previous years, because premium processing was suspended for all H-1B petitions on April 3rd. Premium processing finally re-opened for cap-subject petitions on September 18, 2017, and for all H-1B petitions on October 3, 2017.

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11176275396_fdf69cfd1e_zOn Monday, December 4, 2017, the United States Supreme Court issued an order allowing enforcement of the President’s latest travel ban in its entirety, pending legal challenges in lower courts. In its brief order, the Court signaled its desire for the appellate court to address any challenges to the travel ban, swiftly. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sotomayor were the only justices who would have blocked the latest travel ban from going into effect.

The court’s order means that the Trump administration may enforce all of the provisions of the President’s latest travel ban, until the federal courts hand down rulings on the constitutionality of the ban. As you may recall, non-US citizens affected by travel ban 3.0 include nationals of Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia.

The travel ban DOES NOT affect lawful permanent residents of the United States (green card holders), foreign nationals granted asylum, refugees admitted to the United States, or dual nationals traveling on a passport from a non-designated country.

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According to an internal memorandum, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has plans to conduct a targeted enforcement operation at a national food service chain within the coming weeks. An ICE official spoke with The Daily Beast, on condition of anonymity, telling the news organization that ICE plans to conduct this operation to discourage American employers from exploiting undocumented workers by paying them low wages. Officials told the news organization that the operation will be targeting multiple locations across the United States, and that employers will likely be charged with federal offenses including harboring illegal aliens.

This move is the Trump administration’s latest attempt to deter illegal immigration through worksite enforcement actions, described by the administration as targeted operations to prosecute individuals who employ undocumented immigrants. If all goes to plan, the operation will be primarily focused on prosecuting owners of franchises who illegally employ undocumented immigrants. Sources with knowledge of the investigation have said that a preliminary investigation has already been conducted and that targets have already been chosen.

The food industry has and continues to be an industry that employs thousands of undocumented workers due to the unskilled nature of the work, and the fact that employers are able to cut costs by paying undocumented workers very low salaries. According to a 2008 Pew report, at least 10 percent of the hospitality industry is supported by the labor of undocumented immigrants. Last year, Eater reported that over 20% of all cooks working in restaurant kitchens could be undocumented. Noelle Stewart, communications manager for Define American, said that undocumented immigrants make up a crucial part of our economy in that, “they cultivate our produce; they cook our food,” she says, “the food industry wouldn’t be possible in the way it is without them.”

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The Trump administration has taken its first step toward dismantling the International Entrepreneur Rule, an Obama era program that would have given thousands of foreign entrepreneurs the opportunity to travel to the United States for a 30-month period, for the purpose of starting or scaling their start-up business enterprise in the United States.

On November 17, 2017, the Trump administration sent a notice to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to officially end the International Entrepreneur Rule. This notice appeared on the website of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as early as Friday. At this time, the Trump administration is finalizing a draft to officially rescind the rule. Once the administration has finished reviewing the draft, it will be published in the Federal Register. It is expected that the draft to rescind the rule will be published within the next week.

After publication, a public notice and comment period will follow, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act, a process by which the government invites the public to comment on a proposed version of a government rule published in the Federal Register. Once the comment period has ended, the government responds to comments, considers feedback, and decides whether such feedback will have any influence on their decision to rescind the rule.

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As previously reported, on October 8, 2017, the United States announced the suspension of all non-immigrant visa services across U.S. Embassies and Consulates in Turkey “until further notice,” following news that a U.S. embassy official was placed under arrest without explanation and without access to counsel. This included the suspension of the issuance of: B-2 visas for temporary tourism or medical reasons, B-1 visas for temporary business visitors, F-1 student visas, E-1 treaty trader visas, E-2 treaty trader visas, and other non-immigrant visa types.

Since October 8, 2017 until just recently, no new non-immigrant visa applications were being processed in Turkey until the U.S. government could receive assurances form the Turkish government that embassy staff officials would not be detained or placed under arrest without cause, or access to counsel.

On November 6, 2017, the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, announced that the United States has received sufficient assurances from the Government of Turkey that employees under the diplomatic mission are not under investigation, that local staff of U.S. embassies and consulates will not be detained or arrested in connection with their official duties, and finally that the U.S. government will be notified in advance if the Turkish government plans to arrest or detain any local staff at U.S. embassies in Turkey. The announcement however provides that the United States “continues to have serious concerns about the existing cases against arrested local employees” of the Mission in Turkey and of “. . . the cases against U.S. citizens who have been arrested under [a] state of emergency.”

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personal-3108155_1280It did not take long for President Trump to capitalize on the terrorist attack which took place several days ago in New York City, to attack the Diversity Visa Program and the process by which US Citizens, and in some cases green card holders, can petition for extended family members to immigrate to the United States.

Following the terrorist attack in New York City, which claimed the lives of 8 Americans, the President fired off a series of tweets calling on Congress to terminate the Diversity Visa Program, claiming that the perpetrator of the attack, Sayfullo Saipov, had gained admission to the United States seven years ago through the diversity immigrant visa program, a congressionally mandated program made possible by section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). According to CNN, the Department of Homeland Security has said that Saipov came to the United States in 2010 on a diversity visa. Department of Homeland Security archives confirm that Uzbekistan was a country participating in the Diversity Visa program as early as 2007, and continues to participate in the Diversity Visa Program.

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program

The Diversity Immigrant Visa program is a program enacted by Congress, which allocates up to 50,000 immigrant visas per fiscal year to a special class of immigrants known as “diversity immigrants.” Each fiscal year diversity applicants register for the visa program electronically at no cost. Applicant entries are selected at random through a computerized “lottery” system to allocate the 50,000 available immigrant visas for the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. Only diversity immigrants who are natives of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States qualify for the Diversity Immigrant Visa program. In other words, to qualify for a diversity visa, essentially a green card, you must be a native of a country participating in the diversity visa program. Countries with historically high rates of immigration to the United States DO NOT qualify.

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Unsurprisingly, this week we learned that the Trump administration is taking further steps to toughen the process of applying for an H-1B visa extension/renewal request, and that of other highly sought-after non-immigrant work visa types filed using Form I-129 Petition for Nonimmigrant Worker such as the H, O, P, L, and R work visas. The news comes as part of the President’s ongoing plan to prioritize the employment of American workers over foreign workers, outlined in the President’s Executive Order “Buy American, Hire American.”

On October 23, 2017, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the agency will be updating its adjudication policy “to ensure petitioners meet the burden of proof for a non-immigrant worker extension petition.” The change in policy specifically provides that USCIS officers will “apply the same level of scrutiny to both initial petitions and extension requests” for the H-1B visa as well as other nonimmigrant visa types.

Per USCIS, this policy will now apply to “nearly all non-immigrant classifications filed using Form I-129 Petition for Nonimmigrant Worker.” This means that all nonimmigrant worker visa renewal requests, made using Form I-129, will be subject to the same level of scrutiny that was applied during the foreign worker’s initial non-immigrant work visa request.

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Just one day before Presidential Proclamation No. 9645, “Enhancing Vetting Capabilities and Processes for Detecting Attempted Entry Into the United States by Terrorists or Other Public-Safety Threats,” was set to go into effect, a federal judge in Hawaii issued a ruling blocking portions of the Presidential Proclamation from being enforced on a majority, but not ALL, of the countries, listed in the Proclamation.

The Presidential Proclamation, commonly referred to in the media as ‘travel ban 3.0’ set out to suspend the entry of foreign nationals from eight “countries of identified concern,” and the admission of foreign nationals from those countries was to remain limited until further notice.

The countries to be affected by travel ban 3.0 included: Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. A federal judge from the state of Hawaii by the name of Derrick Watson has granted a temporary restraining order preventing the government from suspending the admission of foreign nationals from the following countries: Chad, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, but DOES NOT prevent the government from suspending the admission of foreign nationals from North Korea and Venezuela, and from imposing stricter screening standards on Iraqi nationals. The restrictions on foreign nationals from North Korea, Venezuela, and Iraq will continue to be enforced according to the Proclamation, beginning today, Thursday, October 19, 2017. Restrictions on North Koreans and Venezuelans will likely remain indefinitely, given that the U.S. government has no formal diplomatic avenues for communication with those countries.

Judge Derrick Watson wrote in his opinion that the latest revision of the ban, “suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor,” and “lacks the sufficient finds that the entry of more than 150 million nationals from [the] specified countries would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States,” and “plainly discriminates based on nationality.”

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Supreme Court Dismisses One of Two Travel Ban Cases

On October 10, 2017, in a one-page order, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the Maryland case, Trump, President of U.S., Et Al. v. Int’l Refugee Assistance, Et Al.,  which sought to block a key provision of Executive Order No. 13,780 temporarily suspending the entry of aliens outlined under Section 2(c). The Supreme Court has dismissed the case because the provision at issue expired on September 24, 2017 and no longer presents a “live case or controversy” for the court to resolve. Accordingly, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment and sent the case back to the lower courts to dismiss the case as moot.

However, the Supreme Court did not act to remove the case, Trump, President of U.S., Et Al. v. Hawaii, Et Al., from its docket, in which the state of Hawaii joined by other states, called on the court to issue an injunction, stopping the federal government from enforcing a travel ban on individuals from six Muslim majority countries as well as refugees. The travel ban at issue, in that case, began on June 29, 2017 and expired on September 27, 2017. The refugee provision of the act however will not expire until October 24, 2017. Given the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the Maryland case, it is likely that the Court will also dismiss the Hawaii case once the refugee provision has expired.

On September 24, 2017, the President revised Executive Order No. 13,780 for a third time adding Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela to its travel ban, and removing Sudan. The third revision of the travel ban will go into effect on October 18, 2017. The Supreme Court did not address the administration’s newly revised travel ban in its order.

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