On October 23, the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) issued a technical assistance letter (TAL) in response to an employer’s request...more
During its most recent stakeholders teleconference, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) reminded participants that regional center reports for 2015 Fiscal Year were due on October 1, 2015, and must be filed by no...more
For over 50 years, the ability to travel to Cuba and do business or trade with Cuban nationals has been governed by a byzantine set of regulations administered by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control...more
10/22/2015
/ Banking Sector ,
Barack Obama ,
Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) ,
Cuba ,
Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR) ,
Export Administration Regulations (EAR) ,
Export Controls ,
Exports ,
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) ,
Telecommunications ,
Trade Relations ,
Travel Permits
The optional practical training (OPT) program allows students here on an F-1 visa (who have either graduated or been pursuing a degree for 9 months) to work in their chosen field of study for one year. In 2008, the U.S....more
10/20/2015
/ Accreditation ,
Comment Period ,
Department of Education ,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ,
E-Verify ,
Federal Register ,
Form F-1 ,
H-1B ,
Immigration Procedures ,
OPT ,
Proposed Legislation ,
STEM ,
Visa Caps ,
Visas
Earlier this month, USCIS, in coordination with the Department of State (“DOS”), announced that it was revising the procedures for determining visa availability for applicants waiting to file for employment-based or...more
Effective September 24, 2015, USCIS will suspend final adjudication of employment-based Adjustment of Status Applications. Cited as the reason is the Department of State’s report that the statutory cap has been reached for...more
Despite the fact that parts of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration currently are being challenged in court, the administration is moving forward with its promise to modernize our antiquated immigration system....more
On August 12, 2015, Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dealt a blow to employers by vacating the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) 2008 interim rule expanding the...more
8/19/2015
/ AFL-CIO ,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ,
E-Verify ,
Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) ,
Form F-1 ,
H-1B ,
Hiring & Firing ,
OPT ,
Popular ,
Stays ,
STEM ,
USCIS
Due to a contempt hearing scheduled for August 19, 2015 in the case of the State of Texas v. United States, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is taking radical measures to recover all three-year Employment...more
Most business immigration practitioners tell H-1B employers an amended or new H-1B petition, along with a corresponding Labor Condition Application (LCA), is required whenever there is a material change in the terms and...more
Birthright citizenship is a hotly debated topic. The United States and Canada are one of the few nations that automatically grant citizenship so expansively to children born within their borders. Anyone born in the U.S. is...more
It is no surprise that the implementation of this administration’s executive actions has run into a series of political and legal snags. But what is surprising is the administration’s response or overall handling of the...more
And so it begins. After more than 50 years of icy relations, Jeffrey DeLaurentis (a U.S. diplomat at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana) delivered a note from President Barak Obama to Cuban President Raul Castro restoring...more
U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (“USCIS”) recently released an alert advising employers that green cards do not always have a signature. For example, USCIS will waive the signature requirement for children under the...more
Determining when is appropriate to pay an honorarium to a foreign national on a visitor’s visa often presents a conundrum. Our immigration system is nothing short of complicated with its alphabet soup of visas, but paying a...more
As previously reported, a group of former employees of Southern California Edison (who claim they were laid off and replaced by H-1B workers) filed a lawsuit in the United States District for the District of Columbia against...more
While the lawsuit challenging President Obama’s executive action continues to garner headlines, an additional lawsuit has been filed contesting another part of the executive actions that DHS is attempting to implement. This...more
In a Thursday midnight filing last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers disclosed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued about 2,000 three-year work permits (as opposed to the currently authorized...more
Today, after receiving nearly 233,000 petitions, United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it conducted its lottery (a computer-generated random selection process) to select the H-1B petitions...more
On Monday, multiple amicus briefs were filed with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of State of Texas v. United States. As way of background, a coalition of 26 states, including the State of Texas, sued the U.S....more
United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (“USCIS”) announced today that it has reached the congressionally mandated H-1B cap for fiscal year 2016....more
Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit granted the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request to expedite its appeal of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s injunction staying President Obama’s immigration actions....more
While a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s executive action has garnered headlines recently, another lawsuit that could negatively impact the labor supply and increase the cost of doing business for employers has largely...more
As reported on March 10, 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) suffered a setback as result of a ruling by a federal district court in the Northern District of Florida on March 4, 2015. Essentially, in Perez v. Perez, No....more
Last Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an emergency motion with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to lift a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen last month in lawsuit filed by...more