Visa Lawyer Blog

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The government has been ramping up enforcement of employment immigration laws, with a particular focus on insuring that companies are staying in compliance. The number of enforcement activities has increased dramatically in the past year. Now, more than ever, it’s important to insure that your company is ready in case of a government I-9 audit. And for the first time, it’s not enough to be in compliance. Each company must prove compliance, and if using an electronic system, use one that works in accordance with immigration laws.

The San Diego Union Tribune reports, enforcement in San Diego County mirrors a national trend toward more scrutiny of employers’ I-9 forms, the universal tool for verifying permission to work in the United States.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, initiated 66 audits with local employers in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, reviewing 5,588 individual I-9s in the process. That was up from 44 audits in fiscal 2009 and just one audit in 2008. A company can be fined up to $1,100 for each illegal employee, and knowingly violating verification laws can lead to criminal charges and forfeited assets.

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The USCIS recently launched a great resource for those preparing to take the Naturalization Test. The online resource has many interactive tools to get ready for the test and more.

Naturalization is the manner in which a person not born in the United States voluntarily becomes a U.S. citizen. Before you apply for naturalization, you must meet a few requirements. Depending on your situation, there are different requirements that may apply to you. General requirements for naturalization are below.

Eligibility Requirements

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This is another update on the H2B wage issue. On August 30, 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Comitè de Apoyo los Trabajadores Agricolas (CATA) v. Solis, et al., Civil No. 2:09-cv-240-LP, 2010 WL 3431761 (E.D. Pa.) invalidated the Department’s use of skill levels in establishing prevailing wages and the Department’s reliance upon Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) data in lieu of Davis Bacon Act and Service Contract Act rates. The court order requires the Department to complete a new rulemaking regarding the calculation of prevailing wage rates in the H-2B program within 120 days.

The Department has been issuing prevailing wage determinations with a validity period ending on June 30, 2011, since the OES data is updated annually each June. Given that the Department has been ordered to promulgate a new regulation in approximately 3 months, which may result in changes to the calculation of the prevailing wage rates, the Department, beginning on September 30, 2010, will issue H-2B prevailing wage determinations with validity periods of three months, in accordance with §655.10(d). This change does not affect the validity periods of existing prevailing wage determinations. It also does not affect any new requests for prevailing wage determinations that will be used in connection with PERM, H-1B, H-1B1 or E-3 applications. We will keep you posted as new information becomes available.

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In a recent article in the L.A. Times, the paper reported that the Obama administration deported a record number of illegal immigrants in the 2010 fiscal year, according to figures released Wednesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The report noted that, “of the 392,862 deportations from October 2009 through September of this year, about half were illegal immigrants with criminal records. The second straight year of record deportations from the U.S. reflects the approach of ICE under the Obama administration to focus its efforts on removing criminal illegal immigrants “who pose a national security or public safety threat,” Homeland Security Deputy Press Secretary Matt Chandler said in a statement.”

Despite this report, one must question how many of those with “criminal records” were really threats as criminals in the U.S. Although it says these illegal immigrants were ones with criminal records, there is no distinction in the news report between those whose acts were misdemeanor offenses or felony offenses. Under immigration law, some misdemeanor offenses can be waived and therefore allow an immigrant to stay in the U.S. Is immigration being unnecessarily hard on those whose offenses were misdemeanors or is ICE going after those who have committed serious felonies?

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UK is getting lot more protests from various quarters. In a rare intervention, eight British Nobel Laureates, including Russian-born Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov who share this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics, have warned that the Government’s plans to put an annual cap on immigration from outside the European Union would deprive Britain of international scientific talent and “isolate” it from the “increasingly globalized world of research”.

Sir Harry Kroto, who got the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996, cited the case of Prashant Jain, an Indian material scientist from the Florida State University, who was offered a fellowship by Cambridge University. But he was refused a visa because he was not able to secure enough points under the points-based immigration system to be eligible for a work permit. He is a researcher who is very clearly going places. It’s an amazing loss to the country. He will probably now stay here in the U.S. when he was quite keen to work in the U.K.. It is a very good example of the problems that immigration (policy) is causing in science. Dr. Jain (28) said he was very keen to work at Cambridge which he described as a “wonderful place” but said he now saw his future in America.

In a joint letter the Nobel Laureates said that Britain’s reputation as a global center of research excellence would be damaged if a rigid cap on immigration made it difficult for universities to recruit the best talent from abroad.

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US plans to maintain a strong presence in the eastern part of the capital, despite moving bulk of services to Arnona neighborhood. After six years of construction, the American Consulate in Jerusalem will open its new facility for consular services on Rehov David Flusser in the southern Arnona neighborhood next Tuesday.

The office that previously dealt with consular services, located on Nablus Road in east Jerusalem, will remain open for consulate programs, along with the facility in west Jerusalem on Rehov Agron, and America House, a cultural outreach center in east Jerusalem.

“The [new] facility was designed to enhance the provision of consular services to American citizens and local residents,” a US Consulate representative said. Consular services include issuing passports and visas, and reporting deaths and births abroad. There are 80,000 registered American citizens living in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which makes the Jerusalem consulate one of the US’s busiest in the world. It maintains an “e-consulate” for Gaza residents, offering most services online.

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As many of our readers know, Chapter 16 of NAFTA (Temporary Entry of Business Persons) provides for the simplified and expeditious temporary entry of businesspersons who are citizens of one country to go into the territory of another. It contains the reciprocal commitments of the United States, Mexico, and Canada to facilitate the temporary entry of businesspersons from one of the three countries. It grants temporary entry to four categories of businesspersons: (1) business visitors (admitted as B-1s); (2) traders and investors (admitted as E-1s and E-2s); (3) intracompany transferees (admitted as L-1s); and (4) professionals (admitted as TNs).

It is important to note that although businesspersons who are citizens of Mexico are entitled to the benefits of NAFTA, they do not have the ease of access to the United States as do citizens of Canada. Canadians can apply for the TN work visa directly at the port of entry from Canada to the USA. Many Canadians are not aware that they can apply for the TN visa on at any Mexican-American port of entry as well.

So how does it work, key requirements?

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On Wednesday, Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced S.B. 3932, The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010. The bill takes a broad approach to solving the wide range of problems that plague our broken immigration system.

It offers proposals on border, interior, and worksite enforcement, on legalization, and on future flows of immigration. Now the Senate and House both have a vehicle (Congressman Luis Gutierrez previously introduced a CIR bill in the House last December) for generating a serious discussion on immigration reform in the coming weeks. These bills are a direct response to the overwhelming public demand for solutions to our broken immigration system. Both political parties have acknowledged that this broken system is no longer sustainable, and is disrupting America’s businesses, families, and long-term economic recovery.

Here is a Link to the Bill

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Employers will see higher charges for most employment-based immigration petitions and applications and for premium processing services when a new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services fee schedule takes effect on November 23, 2010.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will increase the fees for many immigration filings, including premium processing cases, and will introduce new fees for applications and services that were previously processed without charge, according to a final regulation that is set to be published in Friday’s Federal Register. The new fee schedule will take effect 60 days after publication, on November 23, 2010. Petitions and applications postmarked on or after November 23 must include the new fees.

According to USCIS, the agency is altering its fee schedule to reflect the full cost of processing applications and petitions. New Fees for Employment-Based Filings:

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Many attorneys and clients who filed H1B cases in April 2010 are still waiting for decisions on their cases. This process has become very frustrating for employers waiting for employees to start working, as well other related issues. Why is this happening? We have no clear answer. But the American Immigration Lawyers Association was able to get some clarifications today.

USCIS has advised AILA that the Vermont Service Center and the California Service Center will begin prioritizing the adjudication of pending cap-subject H-1B petitions in an attempt to bring their processing times within 60 days as soon as possible. Cases will continue to be adjudicated in the order received.

USCIS has informally advised AILA that it will prioritize the adjudication of H-1B change of status cases for F-1 cap-gap students who are otherwise prohibited from continuing employment after September 30. AILA Liaison has been coordinating with USCIS to help achieve this outcome. While AILA has been collecting lists of these cases, AILA have been advised that USCIS has the means to independently verify them.