Visa Lawyer BlogOn April 17th, USCIS announced that premium processing for H-1B petitions, subject to the fiscal cap year of 2015, would begin on April 28, including petitions qualifying for the advanced degree exemption. Additionally, USCIS guarantees a processing time of 15 calendar days for such petitions.
Frequently Asked Questions about EB-5, H-1B Self Employed, and Fiancé Visa Application for Chinese Nationals
By Yingfei Zhou, Esq.
Q: How can I apply for EB-5 visa?
A: There are two requirements on foreign investors seeking a green card. First, you must invest sufficient funds in an approved project of your choice. Second, ten new full-time jobs must be created as a direct result of that investment. The investment must be either in a new business or an existing business and the investment will spur either a 40% increase in net worth or employees of the existing business.
USCIS Update for DACA Renewals
Beginning September of 2012, USCIS began granting what is known as deferred action to children who arrived to the United States before reaching the age of 16, having met other various requirements. Eligible deferred action applicants received an employment authorization good for a period of up to two years from USCIS. Applicants who applied for deferred action early on are now facing the expiration of their initial two year employment authorization granted to them by USCIS. Due to this, a DACA renewal process is currently underway, giving qualified applicants the opportunity to request and extend their deferred action, in order to avoid unlawful presence in the United States and be able to continue their employment. Details regarding the renewal process will be released in late May 2014, at which time USCIS anticipates that Form I-821D will be used for the dual purpose of initiating DACA petitions and renewal requests. All DACA applicants who wish to file a renewal request must wait until USCIS releases the new form designated for that purpose. Applicants that wish to file an initial deferred action request and not a renewal, can continue to file using the form currently available.
USCIS Announces H-1B Cap Reached
On April 07, 2014, in a much awaited public announcement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it had already reached the statutory cap of H-1B petitions allotted for the 2015 fiscal year. According to the announcement, on the first five days USCIS began to count H-1B petitions, it was already flooded with more than 65,000 of regular cap H-1B petitions and more than 20,000 H-1B petitions qualifying for the advanced degree exemption.
USCIS began accepting H-1B petitions subject to the 2015 fiscal year cap on April 01, 2014. The H1-B visa program is utilized by U.S. businesses seeking to employ foreign workers in what are known as ‘specialty occupations’. Specialty occupations are those that necessitate highly specialized knowledge, whether theoretical or practical, as stated on the USCIS website. Specialty occupations include but are not limited to scientists, doctors, mathematicians, or engineers.
According to the announcement, USCIS completed initial intakes for all filings received by the filing deadline (April 07, 2014), and will conduct a random computer generated selection process also known as a lottery system of selection. Under this process, USCIS will select the number of petitions necessary to fulfill the 65,000 visa cap limit for the general category, and the 20,000 visa cap limit under the advanced degree exemption. Those whose cap-based petitions are not selected will have their cases rejected and filing fees returned to them. As stated by USCIS, the computer generated selection process will consider the advanced degree exemption first. Advanced degree petitions that are not accepted through the initial lottery system will be subjected to the lottery system for the general category.
What to Expect with H-1B 2015 Season
Now that the H-1B cases have been filed, we are anxiously waiting to get the news from USCIS on the cap count.
Last year, USCIS announced on April 5 that it received approximately 124,000 H-1B petitions during the five day filing period, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption. Then, on April 7, 2013, USCIS used a computer-generated random selection process (commonly known as a “lottery”) to select for processing a sufficient number of petitions needed to meet the caps of 65,000 for the general category and 20,000 under the advanced degree exemption limit.
What to Expect This Year
H-1B Visa for Start-up Companies
Our office receives many inquiries from start-up companies that want to hire employees under H-1B visa. As the H-1B season has begun, we would like to provide our readers with the updates and important considerations for this category of H-1B visas.
The following article was prepared by attorney Ekaterina Powell from our office and was featured as the cover article in VOICE, the American Immigration Lawyers Association publication.
E2 Visa for Israelis: March 2014 Update
Recently, the Israeli government approved a proposal from Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar for American investors who wish to visit Israel on a more frequent basis. It is a new arrangement that is part of a recent program to allow Israelis seeking to invest in the U.S. and who wish to stay to develop and manage their business, will be given similar special conditions.
The approval of the plan by the American embassy in Israel is conditioned on the granting of benefits to American investors in Israel. According to this plan, Israeli investors who obtain approval from American authorities will be offered a fast track entry into the US and will receive E2 visas that allow stays of up to two years in the United States.
This new plan will be implemented within the next few months, after several legislative amendments required to complete it are made. Following the approval of the plan, Sa’ar said that the “US is a major economic partner for Israel. It is the main source of foreign investment in Israel and is at the same time one of the major destinations for investments by Israelis. Investor visas constitute another stage in the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement and will promote the economic cooperation of the two countries”, Sa’ar added.
With H-1B Season Underway, Outdated H-1B Visa Program Is Costing Americans Jobs
It is that time of year where companies and individuals are preparing to send their cases to US Immigration to apply for an H-1B visa. Last year the entire cap was filled in the first week of filing, meaning many people were left out and could not get an H-1b visa. When thinking about how many people could not get jobs through this process, an organization that has studied the affects of H-1b visas on the market came out with a job loss calculator, which estimates the numbers of American jobs lost due to the lack of H-1b visas. Compete America’s calculator estimates that 500,000 new U.S. jobs could have been created this year absent outdated restrictions on H-1B visas. From another perspective, according to Compete America, the 2.37 million new payroll jobs created in 2013 might have been increased by 21 percent under a different H-1B scheme.
So what does this calculator really highlight? Well, the calculator clearly shows the fact that higher-skilled immigrant workers impact the U.S. economy, helping push cutting-edge innovation, which then creates more jobs for everyone. According to a new report by Standard & Poor’s, “Adding Skilled Labor to America’s Melting Pot Would Heat Up U.S. Economic Growth,” which means highly skilled immigrants help create jobs for American workers, not take them away like many who stand opposed to increasing the cap would claim. Higher skilled workers actually complement U.S. workers’ skills instead of competing with them, and are more likely to start a new business than U.S.-born workers, which further increases innovation and productivity, according to S&P. Research from the National Foundation for American Policy suggests the hiring of each H-1B worker actually creates employment for 7.5 workers in small to mid-sized technology companies.
The insufficient number of H-1B visas goes to a deeper problem of having an outdated system that cannot respond to the demands of an ever-changing economy. Absent a few years of temporary increases, the cap on H-1B visas for skilled workers with bachelor’s degrees has been set at 65,000 per year for more than 20 years. Since demand far exceeds supply, the cap runs out every year, which last year’s cap was filled the first week it was open.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
By Andrew Desposito (an Irish-American immigration attorney)
While many will be celebrating the holiday wearing green clothing, eating or drinking green food and celebrating with some Irish music, today is also a day for many Irish-Americans to remember why this day is celebrated. Most Irish-Americans in the United States are descendants of immigrants who came to the U.S. seeking better lives. It is about our ancestors leaving that country, often in bitter circumstances, and risking everything on a hazardous journey and being met with fierce hostility and scorn. It is about immigrants struggling, and mostly succeeding, in their new life, or making success possible for their children and grandchildren.
It is a story that should describe all newcomers to America. Before the mass exodus from Ireland provoked by the great potato famine of the 1840s, new arrivals to North America were either settlers or slaves. The Catholic Gaelic Irish were the first cohort consistently labeled as “immigrants” in the modern, quasi-pejorative sense, and their experience established a stereotype, a template, applied ever since to whichever national or ethnic group happened to be the latest impoverished arrivals: French-Canadians, Chinese, Italians, Eastern Europeans, or Latinos. But thinking about the contributions of Irish-Americans to the U.S., their story is the same as many others who immigrate to the U.S. with hopes and dreams of a better life. In time, many Irish-Americans rose through the ranks of business and politics to reach the heights of our society (think President John F Kennedy, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, etc). The U.S. is a place where any who come has a chance of doing great things.
House Republicans Pass ENFORCE Bill That Goes After President Obama and his DREAMers Policy
House Republicans took aim at President Barack Obama’s immigration policy’s that allows young undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States.
The ENFORCE Act, which passed 233 to 181, is not about immigration exclusively. The bill goes after Obama for alleged overreach on a variety of issues, including the Affordable Healthcare Act, education and drug laws. The bill would allow Congress to sue the executive branch for allegedly failing to enforce the law, which could lead to key policies protecting some undocumented immigrants to being dismantled.
This move stands in stark contrast to the immigration principles put forward by House Republican leadership in January and moves further away from the Democrat-controlled Senate actions to try to pass immigration reform. While those guidelines called for young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children — often referred to as Dreamers — to receive eventual citizenship, this bill could end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that keeps the same people from being deported.