Visa Lawyer Blog

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State lawmakers considered a record number of immigration-related bills this year, highlighting their continued frustration with federal government inaction on immigration laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

A total of 1,592 bills were introduced in all 50 states and Puerto Rico in the 2011 legislative session that ended June 30, a report by the bipartisan research organization found.

Legislators in 40 states enacted 151 of the bills, which mainly addressed law enforcement, identification and employment issues, said Ann Morse, program director of the conference’s immigrant policy project. An additional five laws were vetoed by governors.

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Recently, USCIS published new guidelines for the Employment Based Second Preference (EB-2) Immigrant Visa Category. In particular the new guidelines outline how Entrepreneurs can apply under the National Interest Waiver under this visa category. An Entrepreneur qualifies under this category in two ways, as a person holding an advanced degree, and a person who has an exceptional ability in the arts, sciences, or business.

First, the Entrepreneur must show that he or she is a person who holds an advanced degree or an individual of exceptional ability. Next, the Entrepreneur must show that their work is in the national interest. Although the term “national interest” is not defined by law, the case of New York State Department of Transportation has a three prong test that the Entrepreneur must meet in order to qualify. The three prongs of the test are:

1. The waiver applicant must seek employment in an area that has substantial intrinsic merit.

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USCIS updated the Q & A document on employer-employee relationships for the purpose of determining H-1B eligibility. This updated Q & A follows from the memo entitled, “Determining Employer-Employee Relationship for Adjudication of H-1B Petitions, Including Third-Party Site Placements.

The updated Q & A document addresses several key points of the memo, including clarifications on the types of evidence that can be submitted to USCIS to demonstrate an employer-employee relationship and what a petitioner should do if specifically-requested documentation is not available or does not exist.

Specifically, USCIS states that the types of evidence that can be submitted to demonstrate the employer-employee relationship can be those listed in the original memo, which include:

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USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas discusses on the official USCIS blog, The Beacon, how current immigration policies will spur job growth and bolster the U.S. economy. The United States has a long, rich history of welcoming innovative entrepreneurs and skilled workers into our country. These men and women fuel our nation’s economy by creating jobs, and promoting new technologies and ideas. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and outlined a series of new policy, operational, and outreach efforts that will help fuel the nation’s economy and stimulate investment by making it easier for high-skill immigrants to start and grow companies and create jobs here in the United States.

Encouraging the kinds of streamlining measures USCIS is taking today has been one key focus of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness because they help ensure that America can continue to out-innovate and out-compete the world in a global economy.

As part of the Administration’s comprehensive effort to attract and retain high-skill entrepreneurs, USCIS announced that it will:

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A couple weeks ago, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois who has become a perennial thorn on immigration for President Obama, was arrested Tuesday afternoon along with about a dozen activists in a protest outside the White House.

The protesters were arrested peacefully after they sat down on the White House sidewalk, following a rally where demonstrators denounced the Obama administration for deporting more than one million immigrants in the last two years.

In a letter to Mr. Gutierrez on Monday, Mr. Obama rejected his proposal to suspend deportations of illegal immigrant college students with clean criminal records. Last week, Mr. Gutierrez and three other House Democrats had sent a letter to the president requesting the suspensions and also asking him to take executive measures to make it easier for illegal immigrants married to American citizens to remain in the United States.

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Here we go again. A federal grand jury has indicted a former Sacramento immigration consultant and 13 other individuals alleging they participated in an elaborate immigration fraud scheme in which foreign nationals from Eastern Europe and Russia paid to enter into sham marriages with locally recruited U.S. citizens.

For foreign nationals, marriage to an American citizen is one means of obtaining lawful permanent residency in the United States. To initiate that process, aliens who are outside the country must apply for a fiancé visa, which enables them to travel to the United States to marry the citizen spouse. Alternatively, foreign nationals who are already in the United States and entered the country legally, may wed here and apply for lawful permanent residence based upon the marriage.

According to court documents, the scheme involved foreign nationals from Eastern Europe and Russia who paid fees of up to five figures to enter into sham marriages with U.S. citizens. U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced the unsealing of the multi-count indictment charging former immigration consultant Sergey Potepalov, 55, of Citrus Heights, Calif., and the other defendants with conspiring to commit marriage fraud, defrauding the United States, making false statements, and inducing aliens to enter and remain in the United States.

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Attorney Ekaterina Powell from our office has prepared this article about the recently approved I-601 waiver case handled by our law firm.

Our client in this case, John, got married to his U.S. citizen wife, Mary, in San Diego, California. They started the application process for adjustment of status. At the adjustment interview, the immigration officer let them know that a green card cannot be granted to John because he was found to be inadmissible on the grounds of misrepresentation and fraud in connection with his previous visa application.

The couple was devastated. They came to our office to see if we can help them with I-601
Application for waiver of grounds of inadmissibility. We took the case, and we started working with the couple in preparing I-601 waiver petition.

I-601 cases are very unique. Each of them has its own story, a story of a family with lives of many people dependent on the result of the waiver process. The success of the case, often times, means whether the family is going to stay together. Sometimes, if such case is denied, it is a heartbreaking story of a family that used to be happy once but now they have to separate and live apart in different countries for the rest of their lives. It is especially devastating when minor children are involved who would be raised without a parent if the waiver does not succeed.

I-601 cases are very complex and require extensive legal analysis. We are particularly happy if we can assist our clients with I-601 waivers to save their families from falling apart.

I-601 waiver can cure many grounds of inadmissibility, including unlawful presence and 3 and 10 year bars, health-related grounds, certain criminal grounds, fraud and misrepresentation, alien smuggling and certain other grounds of inadmissibility.

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The California DREAM Act is now law after Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 130 on Monday afternoon, but undocumented immigrant students’ say their fight for financial aid access is far from over in the state. The most important portion of the California DREAM Act has yet to pass, activists say.

Starting January 1 of 2012, undocumented immigrant college students will be eligible for privately funded non-state scholarships that they previously did not have access to at California community colleges, state colleges and public universities. The bill breezed through the Senate two weeks ago. AB 130 will cost taxpayers nothing, and so was widely seen as an easier political sell. Still, its passage is being hailed as a victory for immigrant communities. The California DREAM Act had been continually approved by the state legislature but was vetoed three times by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

You can access more information on the bill here.

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Discussions about immigration reform has often focused on the issue of “undocumented” or “illegal” aliens and national security. But fixing our broken immigration system is about more than the determining the fate of approximately ten million people currently living and working and studying in the United States without papers. In the words of President Clinton, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Immigration reform would allow us to create a legal framework for who we want to have remain in our country, who we want to exclude, and to do so in a way that reflects our values and our interests. Most important to Americans right now is that reform would benefit the bottom line. Reform would raise wages, decrease unemployment, and increase tax revenues. Who wouldn’t want that?

Currently, our immigration system hurts our nation’s economy. We want to invite and encourage investment in our economy, attract the best, the brightest and most talented people in our businesses, and to create a fair and level playing field for our workers. Our immigration system falls short of each of these goals.

Our current policies directly hurt American businesses. Congress limits the number of highly-skilled and college-educated workers allowed into the United States from other countries. When the economy was booming in 2007 and 2008, the visas for the entire year were gone in less than one day. Even in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, our country still ran out of visas with eight months left before a new foreign worker could start.

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While many gay couples in New York tie the knot on Sunday, when same-sex marriage becomes legal in the state, Ashley Abraham-Hughes and her wife, Corinne, will be watching the festivities from the other side of the Atlantic.

That’s because since U.S. federal law still does not recognize same-sex marriage, and since Corinne is British, the couple was forced to move to Britain, where their union — they wed in Connecticut in 2009 — is legal.

“While I do still love the U.S. and I always will, I am very resentful of the fact that I was effectively forced to become an expat,” said Abraham-Hughes, a 27-year-old who grew up in Pittsford in western New York and now lives in Manchester. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, and I just think the thinking on this whole issue is completely wrong.”
The couple’s plight is one likely facing many of the estimated 36,000 binational gay couples in the U.S., where the foreign partner in the relationship can face deportation and a 10-year ban from returning to America if they don’t already have or find a legal way to stay in the country.

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