Visa Lawyer Blog

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Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new law that will allow hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and vetoed another that would have restricted sheriffs from helping federal authorities detain undocumented Californians for potential deportation.

The driver’s license measure will allow illegal immigrants to drive legally in California if they qualify for a new federal work permit program. The Obama administration’s executive order known as Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) allows illegal immigrants who came to the United States before they were 16, and who are now 30 or younger and meet certain other criteria, to obtain work permits.

“Gov. Brown believes the federal government should pursue comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship,” said Brown spokesman Gil Duran. “President Obama has recognized the unique status of these students, and making them eligible to apply for driver’s licenses is an obvious next step.”

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The Center for American Progress and the Partnership for a New American Economy released a joint study which found that up to 223,000 of the 2.1 million young illegal immigrants eligible for the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act would have an easier time enrolling, paying for and finishing college, which would lead to the increased economic gains. The report concludes that If illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children were given legal status, their improved access to college and better jobs would add $329 billion and 1.4 million jobs to the nation’s economy over two decades, according to a report set for release today.

“This report proves a fundamental truth about the contributions of immigrants to the American economy: we absolutely need them to continue our economic growth,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.

The report provides an argument in favor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal residency to illegal immigrants brought to the country as children and have completed some college or served in the military. When the DREAM Act was first introduced in 2001, it was a bipartisan effort sponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. It has since become more partisan. The House of Representatives passed it in 2010 with minimal GOP support, and it failed in the Senate when only three Republicans voted for it.

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Get ready DV players! The 2014 Diversity Visa Program (DV-2014) will commence at noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4), Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012, and will close at noon, EDT, Saturday, November 3rd, 2012. Applicants must submit entries electronically during this registration period using the electronic DV entry form (E-DV) at www.dvlottery.state.gov. Paper entries will not be accepted. Applicants are strongly encouraged not to wait until the last week of the registration period to enter. Heavy demand may result in website delays. No entries will be accepted after noon, EDT, on November 3rd, 2012.

Diversity Immigrant Visa Program is administered on an annual basis by the Department of State and conducted under the terms of Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Section 131 of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101-649) amended INA 203 and provides for a class of immigrants known as “diversity immigrants.” Section 203(c) of the INA provides a maximum of 55,000 Diversity Visas each fiscal year to be made available to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Fifty-five thousand immigrant visas are set aside for DV immigrants.

The annual DV program makes visas available to persons meeting the simple, but strict, eligibility requirements. A computer-generated, random drawing chooses selectees for Diversity Visas. The visas are distributed among six geographic regions, with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration, and with no visas going to nationals of countries sending more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States over the period of the past five years. No single country may receive more than seven percent of the available Diversity Visas in any one year.

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The numbers through the third quarter of 2012 for H-1B petitions is in. Through a FOIA request made by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the number of H-1B petitions that have been submitted, approved, denied, and withdrawn have been released. So far this year, 128,893 petitions have been submitted to USCIS. Of those petitions, 75,706 petitions have been approved, 20,717 have been denied, and 1,820 have been withdrawn.

This means there are still 30,650 petitions that are being decided by USCIS. Looking at the approval and denial rates, it appears that the approval rating is around 80% for H-1B petitions for 2012. While this may seem like a low number for employers to accept, it is a higher approval rate than in prior years. In addition, the denial number is the second lowest for denials since 2008, and taking the amount of petitions filed and still pending into consideration, the ratio for approvals to denials appear better than they were 5 years ago.

It is good to see that petition numbers and approvals have increased when comparing them to 2008-2011, but even despite these numbers, one would think the approval rate should be much higher. With all the political rhetoric going on around finding a way to keep those individuals educated in the U.S. in the STEM fields, the H-1B has always been the visa many of those individuals to utilize for working and staying in the U.S. Whether the denials come from a policy within USCIS or not, if we want to keep those educated in the U.S. from leaving, the H-1B visa needs to be utilized more in order to keep them here longer.

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As per the recent updates from White House last week Mexico, China and Brazil, along with other countries, are contributing more to the US tourism industry thanks to a streamlined visa process and reduced wait time. The White House released a progress report saying the Departments of State and Homeland Security were surpassing the goals set by President Barack Obama in January in terms of visa interview time and visa processing capacity to boost the tourism industry in the country.

The report said 88 percent of non-immigrant visa applicants worldwide are interviewed within three weeks of submitting their applications, as against the goal of 80 percent envisioned by President Obama. In key markets such as China, consular officers are keeping interview wait times to an average of five days in 2012 while managing a year-on-year 37 percent increase in visa demand. It also says that Mexico and Brazil, China has passed the 1-million-visa milestone.

As of June, the US mission in Brazil has boosted processing capacity by 40 percent as directed by Obama, while the goal will be met in China by December, the US State Department said. The agency said it will open a new consulate building in China’s Guangzhou in the 2013 fiscal year and a consular section in Wuhan in the 2014 fiscal year, as part of the ongoing efforts to upgrade and expand its existing consular facilities and build new consulates.

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According to a recent update from AILA, DHS is in the process of changing its policy on minors being charged with making false claims to U.S. citizenship. Details are limited at this time.

We understand that DHS has begun implementation of its new policy, which AILA believe will protect certain minors from a false claim charge, and that written guidance will be forthcoming. The Department of State has indicated that it will follow the new DHS policy. We will continue to monitor this closely and will post additional details as they become available.

A foreign national who falsely represents him– or herself as a US Ciitizen in order to obtain a benefit under Immigration Law or any other federal or state law is inadmissible. There is no waiver available.

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Last week we posted an article on how low skilled workers are not a priority in the U.S. despite the economic need for having low skilled immigrant workers within our economy. In this blog we bring to you news of a bill being proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives. House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R) of Texas unveiled a bill Friday that would grant 55,000 visas a year to foreign-born graduates of American universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Rep. Smith reasons that “These students have the ability to start a company that creates jobs or come up with an invention that could jump-start a whole new industry. In a global economy, we cannot afford to educate these foreign graduates in the US and then send them back home to work for our competitors.”
The bill prioritizes PhD recipients who will work in the US for five years and who come from 217 universities that are qualified as top research institutions by the Carnegie Foundation. The bill attempts to protect US workers from foreign competition by excluding biological and biomedical advanced graduates from the program and requiring companies that want to hire applicants for the special visa to post the job on the site of state workforce agencies.

The provocative question is not whether the US should have more STEM immigrants. From 165 university presidents who sent a letter to President Obama and congressional leaders arguing for STEM visas to bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for similar STEM-boosting legislation in the past to polls showing 3 in 4 Americans (including 6 in 10 conservatives) support such measures, support for more STEM immigration is widespread.

The thorny issue is that public support for more STEM visas has not been previously linked to reducing another form of immigration; can Congress and the president stomach more STEM visas if they come at the expense of the diversity green card program?
“I would like to improve the STEM visa program without doing damage to other parts of our legal immigration system,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D) of Illinois in a statement. “The president has made this a priority, and I am prepared to support a clean STEM increase because it will help our economy and create jobs. Republicans are only willing to increase legal immigration for immigrants they want by eliminating legal immigration for immigrants they don’t want.”

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Since Deferred Action was announced, many many questions are still unanswered with respect to this program. In this post we have provided some of the recent few updates.

Temporary deferral of removal only means that DHS will not initiate or continue removal proceedings against eligible applicants during the relevant relief period. The applicant will similarly stop accruing “unlawful presence” which would otherwise bar eligibility for future relief. Deferred action does not confer lawful status or guarantee a path to citizenship; it does not excuse unlawful presence (UP) accrued before or after the relief goes into effect.

This means you continue to accrue UP until your case is approved, denied, or after the period of granted relief has passed without being renewed. However, deferred action does provide employment authorization. This allows you to apply for permission to work in the U.S. by showing “economic need.” DHS retains the discretion to terminate or renew the relief at any time.

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Many people view low-skilled immigrants as an economic burden because they produce few income taxes. But it’s not just these immigrants—almost half of all Americans had no income tax liability in 2011. In other words, according to the logic of immigration’s opponents, America’s economy would benefit from deporting half the country’s population. Despite its absurd implications, no other argument against immigration receives more attention from Congress and the media.

Many policies advocated by the major anti-immigration groups—NumbersUSA, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and Center for Immigration Studies—rest on the assumption that the U.S. would benefit greatly from significantly fewer people. These groups’ founder, radical environmentalist John Tanton, argue that reducing the population leads to environmental progress, but “[if you] double the number of people,” he says, and “we’re back where we started.” All three groups he founded apply his views to immigration and use the tax argument in favor of deporting undocumented workers and even ending low-skilled immigration altogether.

This view misses the point that low wage earners contribute in a significant way to the economy and government budgets. These workers allow Americans to specialize in more productive endeavors. Consider for a moment the worker who files paperwork for a doctor. Because the doctor is now free to see more patients, the worker has created economic value from both his efforts and the doctor’s efforts. Child care providers free mothers to work; construction workers allow U.S. engineers to finish more projects; many others create similar benefits, and truly make a more substantial contribution to the economy and to the U.S. Treasury than appear on tax returns.

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The O-1 is a good visa option for individuals with extraordinary abilities in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics, or with a demonstrated record of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture or television industry who want to come to the U.S. to continue working in the areas of extraordinary abilities. Our office handles a lot of extraordinary ability petitions for scientists in a variety of fields. This article was prepared by attorney Ekaterina Powell from our office.

Dr. Y, a citizen of Ethiopia, came to the U.S. on a J-1 visa as a Research Scholar. For years, she has been engaged in extensive scientific research and has acquired recognition for her achievements in the field of probiotics. With her J-1 status expiring in the coming weeks, Dr. Y received a job offer from an established biotech company specializing in the development and commercialization of probiotic dietary supplements. In the proposed research position within the organization, Dr. Y could continue her innovative research for the development of probiotic supplements as an alternative treatment for kidney failure, as immune system optimization, and for prevention of many diseases.

Dr. Y came to our office inquiring about her options to stay in the U.S. and work for the biotech company. With no more H-1B visas available, the best option for Dr. Y was applying for an O-1 visa. With only a few weeks left to prepare the O-1 petition, Dr. Y was very worried at first that there was not enough time to get everything ready. We assured Dr. Y that with her cooperation in gathering the documents, we would do whatever it takes to prepare a strong case and file it within the deadline, and we were successful in doing so.

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