Visa Lawyer Blog

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U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued instructions on making inquiries with the agency’s four Service Centers. Customers, community-based organizations and liaison groups should follow this guidance when inquiring about case related issues. This new process standardizes customer service and streamlines processing of customer inquiries at USCIS Service Centers. The step-by-step instructions are as follows:
Step 1: National Customer Service Center (NCSC) can be contacted at 1-800-375-5283. The NCSC can assist customers, community-based organizations and liaison groups with case related inquiries. Please get your Receipt No. the NCSC please have available your receipt number, alien registration number, type of application filed and date filed. We recommend you note down:
-The name and/or id number of the NCSC representative
– The date and time of the call
– Any service request referral number, if a service referral on a pending case is taken.

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There is not a dull moment this summer for us immigration lawyers, all thanks to good old USCIS. On 8/6/09 USCIS announced that it has reopened the fiscal year 2009 H-2B petition filing period and will immediately accept petitions. This is after closing the cap in January this year.

How could this happen? The Department of State received far fewer than expected requests for H-2B visas and as a result, has issued only 40,640 H-2B visas for fiscal year 2009 to date. This means that there are approximately 25,000 visas that may go unused, as they have not been granted. Because of the low visa issuance rate, USCIS is reopening the filing period to allow employers to file additional petitions for qualified H-2B temporary foreign nonagricultural workers.

But the catch is that filing and processing must be done by September 30, 2009. So those eligible must use the premium processing to do so. Also, employers must submit the Form I-129 Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker to USCIS with all required documents, including an approved Alien Employment Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor that is valid for the entire employment period stated on the petition. The petitioner must also indicate an employment start date before Oct. 1, 2009. Otherwise the case will be considered for fiscal year 2010.

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President Obama promised during the election campaign that Immigration reform will be high on his list once elected president. Speaking to Hispanic reporters at the White House, Obama said last week he hopes a bill for comprehensive immigration reform will be drafted by the end of this year.

Obama tapped Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on June 25 to work with Congress to speed up immigration reform as senators warned another failed effort could doom chances for a generation. Obama said he asked Napolitano to meet regularly with lawmakers to systematically work through a number of controversial issues, such as how to handle the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States and how to prevent future illegal immigration.

The president has been criticized for not following through on a campaign pledge to tackle the issue this year. He has urged the Democratic-controlled Congress to start pushing now to pass legislation.

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We all know that the nation’s immigrant detention system is a mess. This consists of a collection of public and private facilities that have been widely criticized in recent years, including in two lawsuits that alleged poor conditions in a San Diego detention center. Also, abuse of detainees as well as corruption cases.

Expected to take from three to five years, the reform is intended to bring more order to a “disjointed” detention network of roughly 350 facilities that is heavily dependent on contractors. The effort will be overseen by a new Office of Detention Policy and Planning, headed by former Arizona corrections official Dora Schriro.

More immediate changes will include assigning federal detention managers to work in 23 facilities that Morton called the agency’s most significant, which house more than 40 percent of the detainee population. ICE officials would not say if the agency’s detention center in Otay Mesa, one of its larger contract facilities and the subject of two 2007 lawsuits over detention conditions, would be among them. We hope the above referenced changes will bring a much needed reform.

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California taxpayers need to cover higher fees of private lawyers, who are hired by the state as the Attorney General’s Office doesn’t have the staff to handle all of the cases internally. In some instances, the state has employed outside counsel at hourly rates that reach $450 even while most of its in-house lawyers earn less than half that. Rates can be much higher, if the suits require private attorneys having a particular expertise.

Since January 2008, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has signed about $24 million in contracts with private lawyers hired because the Attorney General’s Office says it’s too shorthanded to take the jobs. The corrections department is seeking the additional help despite having about 80 lawyers of its own to handle a gamut of cases, with about a dozen of those assigned to prisoner-filed litigation.

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These are fun and hot summer days for us Immigration lawyers filing H1B cases. As employers are starting to hire again, we are faced with the challenges of the new Labor Condition Application System, iCert.

The Labor Condition Application is a document which must be certified by the US Department of Labour and it an integral part in the H-1B applications. This document details the terms and conditions of employment, details of the employer, the work profile, rate of salary, prevailing salary (it means the lowest salary that can be paid to a h-1b visa holder) and the location where the h-1b holder will work. As of July 1, 2009 all LCA applications must be done via the icert system

In the past week or so many LCA cases came back with denial notices. The notices had the following language:

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Immigration Reform is getting delayed. The legislation, which was expected to be passed within 100 days of the swearing in of President Barack Obama. Immigration reform activists disappointed that the Obama administration has not given immigration top billing, are trying to push the same off the back burner by pressing ahead with lobbying and legislation plans they hope will reinvigorate reform efforts.

The demand for Immigration reform came in the year 2006, when more than a million people nationwide marched in solidarity to fight a bill considered anti-immigrant, since then, two legislation attempts failed. The election of President Barack Obama gave a sigh of relief to Immigration activists, who hoped Mr. Obama would push for immigration reform. Some thought the president would go so far as to put a moratorium on immigration raids. Recently Mr. Obama met with the 30 lawmakers over this issue but the final outcome of the same is yet to come.

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USCIS has reminded all applicants for Adjustment of Status, Asylum, Legalization and Temporary Protected Status to obtain an Advance Parole (AP) document before traveling abroad. AP allows an applicant to re-enter the U.S. after traveling abroad.

In order to obtain Advance Parole, individuals must file Form I-131, Application for Travel Document to USCIS. The USCIS cautions individuals planning on traveling abroad to file Form I-131 well in advance of their travel plans (approximately 90 days before) in order to prevent possible conflicts.

We suggest all applicants of I-131 to file it in time to get the AP approval before leaving the U.S., otherwise it could have dire consequences and may result in an individual not being able to re-enter. Therefore, individuals that have a pending I-485 are encouraged to apply for Advance Parole before traveling abroad for easier re-entry if the circumstances of their current status changes.

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Recently I came across a Blog published by a Consular Officer, Calling a Spade a Spade, in it you can find tips and humor about Consular life and dealing with applicants. In this post the officer suggests a list of things which should not be done at the interview window.

“Visa interviewing is generally a lot of fun, when your section is properly staffed and workload is manageable. You chat with interesting people from all walks of life and occasionally make some good contacts and even friends with individuals you may never have met otherwise.

You also interview people who just drive you up a wall for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s a result of a particular behavior. Sometimes it’s a characteristic. Sometimes it’s just the audacity. In no particular order, here are my top visa applicant pet peeves:
1. Women who believe that dressing like a whore betters their chances of obtaining a visa from me, because, you know, I’m just that shallow. This faux pas is usually accompanied by body language designed to, shall we say, maximize exposure. These aren’t rank-ordered, but this might be the one that irritates me the most.

2. Applicants who haven’t showered in days, whose musky stench lingers at my window for a half-hour after the applicant has gone. Sailors and some categories of clergy are by far the most serious offenders. I can’t believe other applicants are all that happy to be sitting in a waiting room with these people, either.

3. Applicants who steadfastly deny wrongdoing, even when shown incontrovertible evidence.

“You’ve never been in U.S.?”
“No, never.”
“Well, here’s an entry record from May 21, 2006 and an exit for September 30, 2008.”
“That must be a mistake.”
“You’ve never been arrested?”
“Never.”
“Well, I have an exact fingerprint match here for an arrest on assault and battery charges in Birmingham, Alabama in 2007.”
“It’s not me.”
“How do your fingerprints show up in Alabama, if you’ve never been in the U.S. and never been arrested?”
“I don’t know, but I swear I’ve never been to the U.S. or arrested.”
I’m just left speechless.

4. Applicants refused tourist visas who then proceed to trash-talk America to prove that they’d never want to live there in a million years. “Why would I want to live there? Your shallow, materialistic, godless culture. Ugh.”
So why visit, chucklehead? I hear Saudi Arabia’s very nice this time of the year.

5. Applicants who fake medical infirmities to play on my sympathy. Medical cases are actually not that difficult to adjudicate, since you’re supposed to put aside the medical issue and first judge whether the applicant overcomes 214(b). Of course, we’re human, and if you’re an empathetic chap like myself, it’s sometimes hard separate the two. But when I refuse a “deaf” applicant and then see him walk away conversing without difficulty with other applicants, it’s a great reminder of why it’s so important to adjudicate these cases properly…..

6. Applicants who begin the interview themselves. That’s right. They come right up to the window and start rambling. Sometimes when we’re not busy, for my own amusement, I’ll just let them keep right on going out of morbid curiosity to see how long it will run. After awhile, I start to wonder whether I’ll actually need to ask any questions.

7. Applicants who share too much personal information. You’re divorced. Okay. That’s really all I need to know. I don’t need to know that impotence was the reason, or he slept with your sister, or she hid from you a second job as a streetwalker. The legal term for that information is, I believe, “immaterial.”

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The USCIS California Service Center is in the process of identifying all pending Adjustment of Status (AOS) applications in the EB-5 category based on the pilot program, and all non-Minister Religious Worker I-485s. All applicants with pending AOS application and for a non-minister Religious Worker in the EB-5 category can bring this to the notice of California Service Center.

Please let us know if you have such application pending before CSC.