Articles Posted in Work Visas

ComputerWorld’s Patrick Thibodeau is doing an excellent job covering H1B and the Green Crisis in the past two years. I was happy to be interviewed for his H1B article coverage in early April. His most recent article regarding the need for Green Card Fix is right on the money.

He states: Fixing the permanent residency, or green card employment-based, visa program has been a top legislative goal of high-tech industry proponents, on par with their efforts to raise the H-1B cap.

And Lofgren, who heads the U.S. House Subcommittee on Immigration, is in the position to move legislation to the head of the class. But it remains to be seen whether she can jump over the legislative stalemate created by lawmakers who want comprehensive immigration reform or nothing at all. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has introduced three bills in the past few weeks to help foreign nationals already working in the U.S. obtain permanent residency.

We continue our updates on the new TN visa extension rules. USCIS announced today that it is publishing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to increase the maximum amount of time a Trade- NAFTA (TN) professional worker from Canada or Mexico can remain in the United States before seeking readmission or obtaining an extension of stay. The proposal will extend the maximum period of admission for TN workers from one year to three years, the same term that USCIS currently may grant to H-1B specialty occupation workers.

The proposed rule will further allow eligible TN nonimmigrants to be granted an extension of stay in increments of up to three years, as opposed to the current maximum of one year. TN nonimmigrants are not subject to a maximum period of stay and thus may seek multiple readmissions or extensions, provided their intended professional activity continues and they remain otherwise eligible. Current regulations require that TN workers seek readmission or apply for an extension of stay each year.

More about TN visas read here

DHS issued an updated OPT filing guide for schools and students.In April, DHS published an Interim Final Rule (IFR) titled Extending Period of Optional Practical Training by 17 Months for F-1 Nonimmigrant Students With STEM Degrees and Expanding Cap-Gap Relief for All F-1 Students With Pending H-1B Petitions. The revised guide follows this rule.

Click here to download Download file

The H1B madness is almost behind us, yet potential workers and employers alike are still curious and interested in this visa. They often want to know when will they be able to apply again and what is this visa all about.

The H1B status is for foreign workers who will hold specialty occupations. A specialty occupation is one which “requires theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge to fully perform the occupation AND which requires the attainment of a bachelor’s degree or higher in a specific specialty as a minimum for entry into the occupation in the United States.”
The employer must describe the elements of the case to the USCIS on a petition format letter. This first posting in the series about the H1B process contains a sample of such letter. Click below

Continue reading

Some good news for Canadians and Mexican nationals seeking to live and work in the US. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has cleared a proposed DHS rule to allow TN visa holders to stay in the US for three (3)years instead of the current one (1) year limit.

Currently TN visa applicants must apply every year for renewals, either from inside the US or appear at the Border, for Canadian applicants. Mexican Nationals must still apply at the US Embassy in Mexico. We welcome the new proposed rule and hope that this will pass.

More on the proposed rule click here

Recently the Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee held an oversight hearing on the H-2B seasonal worker visa program.

As I have previously reported, the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act of 2005 (SOS Act) created a cap exemption for “returning workers,” defined as those workers who were counted against the 66,000 annual H-2B cap during any one of the three fiscal years preceding the fiscal year of the requested employment start date. The returning worker provisions of the SOS Act, which originally expired on September 30, 2006, were reauthorized by Congress for one additional year, through Fiscal Year (FY) 2007, which ended on September 30, 2007. This provision was never extended resulting is major hardship to employers in the Hospitality and Constructions industries as well as other employers.

We link to a testimony of R. D. Musser, III President of the famous Grand Hotel explaining the impact of the H2B crisis on his Hotel and the industry. He calls for immediate reform.

Good news for the aspiring self employed H1B workers. An AAO non-precedent decision finds that a corporation has a separate legal identity from its owner, even if it is owned and operated by a single person. Also finds that the proffered position is a specialty occupation, despite the fact that the beneficiary may undertake administrative tasks as the sole proprietor.

Although we never recommend for H1B workers to form companies that sponsor them , in certain cases it is very possible.

Read the decision here Download file

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today conducted

the computer-generated random selection processes on H-1B petitions, to select which H- 1B petitions for fiscal year 2009 (FY 2009) would continue to full adjudication. If

approved these H-1B petitions will be eligible to receive an H-1B visa number.

Well the numbers are out, I lost my bet. I predicted 200,000 visa applications to be received. The actual numbers are lower. This reflects the low confidence employers put in this system.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today announced a preliminary

number of nearly 163,000 H-1B petitions received during the filing period ending on April 7, 2008. More than 31,200 of those petitions were for the advanced degree category.

Talk about H1B filing nightmare. American Immigration Lawyers Association has received reports that Federal Express forwarded a number of H-1B packages to the service centers without entering the individual package into the tracking system. AILA and USCIS are discussing how to handle the situation, and USCIS is talking to Federal Express.USCIS urges filers NOT to submit duplicates of packages that are missing tracking numbers, as that could result in both applications being denied as multiple filings under the new rules.

We sent ALL our cases via FEDEX but we were able to track all of them. Let’s hope this problem will be resolved very soon. We will keep you posted.