Category

Immigration
After a successful pilot testing phase, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) announced it has fully implemented an electronic pre-registration program for H-1B visas.  This mandatory pre-registration process is designed to streamline the process for both the agency and employers.  Now, in order to be eligible to submit an H-1B petition, the employer...
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Now that the window to submit petitions for H-1B workers for fiscal year 2020 has officially closed, employers that filed petitions are nervously awaiting to see if their petitions survived the cap and were selected for processing. This year saw a record 201,011 petitions filed for H-1B workers.  With only 85,000 H-1B visas available, the...
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Companies needing to extend their employees’ H-1B visa status from this year onward may face additional difficulty in doing so. United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently issued policy guidance instructing its officers to apply the same level of scrutiny toward renewal applications as toward initial petitions for nearly all nonimmigrant employment visa classifications,...
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The Trump administration announced today, September 5, 2017, that it will terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and placed the responsibility on Congress to find a legislative solution for those affected. The DACA program was created by executive action under the Obama administration to protect young illegal immigrants who arrived to the United ...
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On April 18, 2017, President Trump signed an executive action entitled “Buy American and Hire American.” While the order does not have any immediate impact on employment visa programs, it reflects the administration’s strong stance on increasing enforcement of immigration laws which may impact employers that sponsor or hire foreign employees. In light of this...
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Regardless of whether or not  you agree with the Trump administration’s stance on immigration, it is undeniable that actions taken and promises made to-date have created a great amount of concern and uncertainty for both undocumented immigrants and legal permanent residents. This concern was amplified by the fact that, in the wake of the President’s executive action...
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Despite the Obama administration’s movement towards immigration reform, more and more employers are being audited to determine if they are employing illegal immigrants.  In 2012, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) audited the I-9 forms of over 3,000 employers, up from only 250 employers just 5 years ago.  Not only have employer fines increased from...
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Today the Obama Administration is expected to formally announce that it will no longer seek deportation of most young illegal immigrants.  Rather, it will grant deferred action to eligible young people who were brought to the United States before age 16, who have been raised and educated in the U.S., and who meet other qualifying...
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