Immigration Visa Lawyer Blog

In response to the outbreak of H1N1 influenza, The US Embassy in Mexico City announced that it will not process the 5100 non-immigrant visa appointments scheduled from Monday April 27 to Wednesday April 29. US Citizen Services will be reduced substantially during this period as well. The Embassy will contact or mail all affected with a new appointment dates to begin after May 5, 2009. If affected you may call 01-800-719-2525. Emergencies should send emails to visa_mexico@state.gov

President Obama will appoint Alejandro Mayorkas to head the United States Immigration and Citizenship Services. Alejandro Mayorkas is an attorney and a partner at O'melveny & Myers LLP in Los Angeles California. He is a 1985 graduate form Loyola University Law School. Mr. Mayorkas served as the United States Attorney for the Central District of California during the Clinton Administration and was the youngest attorney to be appointed to this position. He served in that capacity for nine years. His most notable achievement was in the area of Civil Rights and the prosecution of hate crimes. In 2008 he served on the Obama - Biden Transition team as a Department of Justice Team Leader. He will replace Michael Aytes, Acting Deputy Director as the agencies highest ranking official managing approximately seven million immigration cases yearly. Mr. Mayorkas is born in Havana, Cuba and came to the US in 1960 with his family after Fidel Castor took over in Cuba. Mr. Mayorkas has strong ties with the Latino community and is considered by many to be a charismatic leader. We welcome him to his new challenge.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois intend to introduce the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act aimed at improving the Department of Labor ability to crack down on abuses in the H-1B and L-1 visa program. The bill appears to be enforcement focused and similar to prior bill that was rejected last year.
• It would require employers to make a good faith effort to hire American workers prior to filing H or L visa petitions,
• The proposed bill would add restrictions or freeze on companies with more than 50% of its workforce is H or L visas holders.
• It would expand powers of the Department of Labor to investigate employers suspected of violations.
• Finally, it would establish a process to audit foreign companies hiring L-1 visa workers to insure that such companies are not using the L visa program to circumvent wage safeguards placed on the H-1B program.

In my last blog we discussed H-1B RFE's in general. In this blog we will discuss a component of an H-1B Request for Additional Evidence (RFE) relating to requested information pertaining to the employer. The list of documents requested from the employer is typically extensive. A detailed RFE request can contain some or all of the following documents request: Contract Agreement, Statement of Work, In-house Project Description, Itinerary of Service, Form 941, Federal Quarterly Wage Report, State Quarterly Wage Reports, Federal Income Tax Returns, Payroll Summary for all employees, W-2 & W-3 Wage Tax Statements, Organizational Chart, List of H-1B Employees, tracking number for every case, date of birth and title of each H-1B employee, Photographs of Business Premise, Business Licenses, Article of Incorporation, Lease Agreement, Floor Plan, Telephone Directory Listing all employees, Evidence of appropriate zoning for the office, list of all H-1B filed, list of all H-1B's withdrawn, and more...

So why USCIS will request such an exhaustive list of documents form Employers in an H-1B RFE? The short answer is frustration. Based on a study published last year by USCIS, approximately 20,000 petitions submitted yearly are either fraudulent or contain technical violations. Approximately 88% of these petitions go undetected. USCIS, in an attempt to improve its percentage, requests extensive document list from certain profiled petitions. USCIS will compare some of this information to the petition filed and will use public source material to look for discrepancies. Of course a poorly prepared petition with missing or inconsistent information will almost always trigger an RFE or a denial subsequently. USCIS utilizing Chi-Square test for statistical significance in its studies identified fraud indicators in H-1B petitions. The indicators are as follows:

Continue reading "Request for Evidence, H-1B, Employer Information - Part II" »

Before the debate on Comprehensive Immigration Reform begins, the White House issued a statement that they are not looking at passing reform this year but perhaps next year. While Comprehensive Immigration Reform has always been tied to national security concerns, there is a new and compelling theory linking Comprehensive Immigration Reform to our economic recovery. An opinion published by the Wall Street Journal Immigrants Can Help Fix the Housing Bubble, is very insightful and logical. It is written by Gary Shilling who is an economic consultant, and Richard LeFrak, a real estate developer. The article suggests that we should give legalization to immigrants who can afford buying homes. The excess inventory of homes currently at 2.4 million is a contributing factor to the current recession and a direct cause of a possible lingering recession until the excess inventory is depleted. Unless demand for homes is created or increased, it is anticipated that homeowners will be dealing with an additional average decrease in home value of 14% in addition to the average decline of 27% experienced since 2006. This may very well put near half the homeowners in the US in possible negative equity. Unless this trend is reversed, we are looking at more difficult times ahead. Immigrants or legalization can certainly provide the answer.

Continue reading "Comprehensive Immigration Reform is good for the economy" »

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USCIS confirmed today that they are still accepting petitions for both the H-1B cap and the master's cap categories. They estimated that they have received half of the H-1B Cap petitions and most of the master's cap petitions needed to reach the cap in both categories. Regarding cases filed under the premium processing program, USCIS will either adjudicate them or issue requests for evidence no later than April 22, 2009. USCIS will begin issuing receipt notices for H-1B cap cases as of today, although they have acknowledge that they have inadvertently issued some valid receipt notices earlier. This year would mark the first time the 20,000 H-1B US masters cap will be reached prior to the 65,000 H-1B cap. The latter only requires a bachelor degree or equivalent, whereas the master's cap requires US masters degree. This is consistent with the current difficult economic conditions where the more educated and more skilled are better able to find jobs. USCIS has experienced this year more than 60% drop in H-1B petitions from last year. During the same time, last year USCIS received 163,000 petitions that competed for the available 85,000 visas using a lottery system. This year the best estimate is that USCIS received approximately 50,000 applications leaving approximately 35,000 visas available for fiscal year 2010.
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