Visa Lawyer Blog

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The Senate has voted to approve of the Immigration Bill they have drafted and allow the House to consider its proposal by a strong vote of 68-32. With 14 Republicans voting in favor, the Democratic leadership and the bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted the original bill seemed determined to savor the moment. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. presided over the vote as senators announced their positions from their desks, in a ceremonial procedure reserved for special occasions. The Senate bill provides a 13-year path to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country, as well as tough border security provisions that must be in place before the immigrants can gain legal status.

As the bill heads to the House, Republican elites and their well-financed pro-immigration groups are running up against opposition from the chamber’s most conservative members. Speaker John A. Boehner threw cold water on any hope that the House would vote on the Senate plan, and he insisted that whatever immigration measure his chamber took up would have to be supported by a majority of his Republican conference. “I issued a statement that I thought was pretty clear, but apparently some haven’t gotten the message: The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” he said Thursday morning. “We’re going to do our own bill.”

The legislation — drafted largely behind closed doors by the bipartisan group — brought together an unlikely coalition of Democrats and Republicans, business groups and labor unions, farmworkers and growers, and Latino, gay rights, and immigration advocates. Along the way, the legislation was shaped and tweaked by a series of backroom deals and negotiations that, in many ways, seemed to mirror its inception.

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Today, the United States Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), describing the federal law as an assault on fundamental human rights. In his opinion, Justice Kennedy said the law served “no legitimate purpose” to justify the effect of the law, and was a way to “disparage and to injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.”

In concluding the decision, the Supreme Court concluded that “DOMA’s principal effect is to identify and make unequal a subset of state-sanctioned marriages. It contrives to deprive some couples married under the laws of their State, but not others, of both rights and responsibilities, creating two contradictory marriage regimeswithin the same State. It also forces same-sex couples to live as married for the purpose of state law but unmarried for the purpose of federal law, thus diminishing the stability and predictability of basic personal relations the State has found it proper to acknowledge and protect.”

In response to this decision, President Obama stated in a statement released by the White House the federal law “treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people,” He said the Supreme Court has “righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it.”

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The Senate’s immigration-reform bill this week moves into its most critical stretch, with a major border-security amendment under consideration and a final vote on the landmark legislation expected before senators leave Washington for their Fourth of July break.

“It is the crucial week — the crucial week,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told The Arizona Republic on Friday.

A compromise negotiated last week by Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., has reinvigorated supporters of the “Gang of Eight” bill, a comprehensive immigration-system overhaul that would include a pathway to citizenship for most of the estimated 11 million immigrants now in the country illegally.

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Great commnets by Mr. Brent Renison, Member of the AILA Media-Advocacy Committee, he calls on the Obama Administration to grant OPT extensions to recent graduates with job offers who did not win the H-1B lottery. The feeling is that International students come to the US spend good money on education, and can stay to contribute to advance our country. But instead of a welcome note, they get the Boot every time.

During the first week of April, 2013, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received approximately 124,000 petitions for H-1B work visas, more than the yearly limit of 85,000. That not only means that all the H-1B slots for the entire fiscal year 2014 running from October 1, 2013 to September 30, 2014 are used up already, but that 39,000 applicants were rejected. The rejection notices came via returned petitions during the middle of May.

For foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities who have job offers from U.S. employers following graduation, this has meant being forced to give up, pack up, and leave the country. Take Joanita Bora, for example. She graduated from Willamette University in Oregon with a Master’s of Business Administration, and was offered a job in her field following graduation. She was able to work under a one-year work permit under the Optional Practical Training (OPT) category, post graduation. Her employer filed an H-1B petition on her behalf, but Joanita was one of the unlucky thousands whose petitions were not selected in the random lottery for the slots. Her OPT ended in May, and without an H-1B petition in place, she was given just 60 days to leave. Now she has returned to India, but has started a facebook page to express her frustration.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is roiling the Senate immigration debate by offering several amendments that could give him an edge in a future Republican presidential primary. Paul, who could square off against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the bill’s primary authors, in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, is taking aim at three of the most controversial areas of the bill, according to Senate aides familiar with the measures

His amendments puts pressure on Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who says he wants to pass immigration reform but has not yet committed to voting for the 1,075-page Senate bill. McConnell faces reelection in 2014; while he does not yet have a credible primary challenger, he has sought to shore up his right flank by maintaining close ties to Paul.

Paul’s most ambitious proposal would eliminate the pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants and lift the caps on guest workers. It would provide immigrant workers to employers who can demonstrate need, but immigrants would have to apply for legal permanent residency and citizenship through the existing lines of their native countries. Paul is expected to file that amendment this week.

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On June 11, 2013, AILA NBC Liaison Committee released a practice pointer, specified procedures to follow in filling and renewing an Adjustment of Status (I-485) application. When you are actually applying, make sure you check with your local immigration courts and USCIS field offices to see if there are case-specific variations to the following general procedures.

I. Initial filings

An adjustment of status (Form I-485) application can be filed by those who are in removal proceedings and are eligible, or become eligible, to have their status adjusted in one or two ways. Usually, the immigration court will determine the option applicant must follow.

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The Senate pushed contentious immigration legislation over early procedural hurdles with deceptive ease on Tuesday as President Barack Obama insisted the “moment is now” to give 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally a chance at citizenship. As a full debate and suggested amendments are made to the bill, there are several points to consider as the Senate moves closer to voting on a bill that will bring comprehensive immigration reform.

– A closed border does not facilitate a robust immigration system. Piling on additional border-enforcement measures that are grounded more in politics than effective law enforcement is a waste of resources, and ignores the fact that ending illegal immigration requires a balance of enforcement measures, new immigration programs for future labor needs, and a working E-Verify system. Texas Sen. John Cornyn has mentioned the need for stronger borders, including 90% apprehension rates at our border entries.

Also, while there is a need for secure borders, there is also a need for further streamlining and efficiently facilitating the daily cross-border flows of people, goods, and services important to the critical economic relationships between the United States and Mexico and Canada.

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AILA recently released a great summary about responding to a Notice of I-9 inspection, here is a brief summary.

A company’s Employment Eligibility Verification Forms, also known as Form I-9, is used to verify employee’s identity and employment authorization. Employers must complete Form I-9 to document verification of the identity and employment authorization of each new employee (both citizen and noncitizen) hired after November 6, 1986, to work in the United States.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is authorized to issue a Notice of Inspection (NOI) and any accompanying subpoenas from ICE, to audit a company’s I-9 forms. Although ICE can issue both, it is more common that you will get an NOI with a document list. Since government investigations and audits can become complicated and lead to serious consequences, many companies will panic. It is important for the company to seek a counsel as soon as possible to assist you throughout the process. This article provided you following tips in responding to a Form I-9 Notice of Inspection:

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Over the past couple of years, the immigration service center has increased the number of requests for evidence (RFE) they issue on most non-immigrant worker visas. Recently, our office got approved a request for evidence on an L-1B, intracompany transferee specialized knowledge.

The L-1B, intracompany, transferee specialized knowledge visa is used by companies transferring an employee to the US company to work in a position that, as you might have guessed, requires specialized knowledge. The requirements are pretty vague, since immigration defines specialized knowledge as “information and experience about the company’s products, services, research, equipment, techniques, or interests and their applications in international markets. A “specialized knowledge” employee has an advanced level of knowledge or expertise in the organization’s processes and procedures.

This specialized knowledge must be required to carry out the duties of the position with the U.S. affiliated company.” It becomes the burden of the petitioner to demonstrate how the employee in question holds specialized knowledge of the company’s products, services, equipment and so forth. This burden can prove difficult at times since it is usually clear to the employer why the person they are seeking to transfer to the US office has the specialized knowledge.

Part of a successful petition for an L-1B visa is demonstrating that the company’s product, services, equipment, or interests require specialized knowledge, the employee has the requisite specialized knowledge and no one else in the US or foreign office has that knowledge or can easily attain that knowledge to carry out that role.

Our client came to us because the initial filing on their L-1B petition received an RFE asking for additional evidence to establish how the beneficiary met the requirements of an employee with specialized knowledge. The RFE was lengthy since it questioned everything about the petition from the position’s requiring specialized knowledge to the companies meeting the transfer requirements.

Qualifying relationship between the companies

The first points to address were the qualifying relationship between the companies for transferring the employee. In particular the RFE requested documentation to establish the relationship through the submission of documents like stock certificates, bank statements, wire transfers, stock ledgers, and so forth. It was also requested that a breakdown of the ownership of the foreign company be submitted to demonstrate that the US company was the parent company. By providing these documents in the initial petition, the issue would not have been raised, but in some cases where ownership changes hands it becomes difficult for immigration to determine that the relationship still exists. In our case it was possible to show through those documents that the relationship still existed between the parent and foreign company.

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As more and more immigrant families and communities are torn apart by current U.S. detention and deportation policies, it is crucial that that everyone concerned — citizens, community members, friends and family — stand up and speak out on these issues. Great action by the Detention Watch Network for Father’s Day:

Organize a teach-in or educational event about detention in your community

Organize a public action, vigil or march

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