USCIS updated the processing times it is taking for applications. There are some glaringly slow processing times. These are dates that reflect statistics from January 31, 2016. If you have an Extension or Change of Status for H-1B cases, you will be waiting many months, no matter whether it is in California’s or Vermont’s Service Center. The slow pace of H-1B extension processing times has been problematic over the past few months and is the source of much ire from companies, employees, and lawyers. It is essentially demanding the $1,225 fee for premium processing. U visa processing time has just frozen in May of 2014.

If you have a petition pending at the Potomac Service Center – you know that because your receipt number begins with the string ‘YSC’- you will not know your processing time. Petitions that are pending at the Potomac Service Center do not have published processing times and you cannot check their status on the case status checker online.

Recognizing that many of their employment authorization petitions are pushing 90 days, USCIS is issuing transfer notices and spreading the work load.

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There are proposals to increase the Asylum cap, a topic this blog briefly covered this week. The president requests the asylum ceiling on each year and Congress signs off on that number. The cap this year is 70,000. This includes asylum grants in immigration court and affirmative asylum cases that USCIS hears.

The White House announced this week that it would welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees this upcoming year. The plight of Syrian, Afghani, Iraqi, and refugees from other countries in the Levant has been headline news for months, as civil wars and internal strife have predominated in those nations in recent years. Syria’s civil war has been particularly devastating. People have been deracinated from their homes, livelihoods, and communities. Migrants have been escaping to Southern Europe through the Mediterranean in immense numbers over recent months, often to tragic ends. Their resettlement has become an intensely divisive issue in the European Union. Some countries in the EU are staunchly against resettlement in their own countries or doing it in limited numbers.

To accommodate taking in more Syrians, proposals are suggested for increasing the asylum cap to 85,000 for Fiscal Year 2016 and 100,000 for Fiscal Year 2017. The increase is criticized for being an increase and it is lambasted for not doing enough to relieve the overall crisis. Very few Syrians have received asylum in the United States since the civil war began. General bad conditions (such as civil war, disease, famine) are not bases for asylum. Syria has been accorded TPS status.

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The basis of Superior Court Judge Arthur Anderson’s decision is that federal law determines who is lawfully present in the United States. Arizona has a voter-enacted law, Proposition 300, which demands that individuals seeking a federal, state, or local public benefit must submit specific documentation to prove lawful presence in the United States. There are also prohibitions from Arizona’s controversial SB1070 law, which was largely but not entirety stricken down by the United States Supreme Court.

The DREAMers have been clamoring for comprehensive immigration reform that will grant them a pathway to citizenship, as long as they meet certain requirements. Their argument is that they were brought to the United States as young children and have grown up knowing themselves to be Americans. Many DREAMers are unaware of their status until they start applying for colleges and realize that they do not qualify for scholarships and federal benefits because of their status.

Deferred action is not immigration status that grants green cards or a path to citizenship. It is a temporary allowance of authorized stay without many benefits. Individuals can obtain work authorization. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was announced on June 15, 2012 and is available for periods of two years. Expanded DACA and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) are being challenged by 26 states in Texas v. United States. The case is currently awaiting a decision in the Fifth Circuit after a federal judge in Texas blocked implementation of the programs because they were announced without following the Administrative Procedural Act’s Notice-and-Comment.

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The National Foundation of American Policy reported last week that the denial rate for L-1B petitions has reached a historic high of 35% for Fiscal Year 2014. This is an increase from 30% in FY 2012 and 34% in Fiscal Year 2013. While those numbers seem consistent, 35% is a stark contrast from the 6% denial rate from FY 2006.

The L-1B visa is an opportunity for multinational companies to transfer high-skilled employees from their overseas locations to the United States. There are certain requirements that must be met. The employee (1) must have been employed for a qualifying organization abroad for one continuous year in the past three years and (2) be seeking to perform a specialized knowledge position with the qualifying organization in the United States. The employer (1) must have the requisite relationship with the foreign company and (2) be engaged in or it must engage in business as a US employer with another country through the qualifying organization. The visa is an important tool for companies that are seeking US locations and would like to fortify their US operations with institutional knowledge.

The report contains some shocking statistics. 56% of employees transferring from India were denied between 2012-2014, more than four times the denial rate of 13% for employees from other countries in that time period. Nationals from other countries were also above that 13% rate, but Canadians only had a 4% denial. The increase in denials is especially consternating because there has not been a change in the L-1B regulations.

The White House announced that a guidance memo on L-1B visas will be released this week. L-1B guidance has been mentioned for years and was part of the executive actions announced in November. The guidance memo was released on March 24, 2015.

The Law Offices of Andrew Wood is committed to facilitating job-creating companies and employers who are growing the US economy. L-1 visas are an important aspect of that. In a global economy, we recognize that companies need employment visas to compete globally. Employment-based green cards are notoriously difficult, making non-immigrant visas the practical option. Given that L-1 and H-1B non-immigrant visas are the two practical means that companies have for retaining international nonimmigrant employees, guidance will be timely.

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The Office of Foreign Labor Certification released statistics for the first quarter of the 2015 Fiscal Year (starting October 1) on the whole range of employment based certification for foreign workers. A function of the Department of Labor, the FLC is tasked with certifying the H-1B visa labor conditions and permanent employment labor certifications.

The statistics for the first three months of the fiscal year reveal that over 80,000 H-1B applications were received, the overwhelming majority of which are in the computers realm – Computer Systems Analysts, Software Developers, Programmers, and other Computer Occupations dominate the list of certified positions. There is also nothing surprising about the states leading the way in H-1B applications: California, Texas, and New York are the top three states. Pennsylvania is eighth. Also revealing is that 176,259 positions were requested for certification and over 95% of those requests were certified. H1-B season picks up in full force over the next few months, as applications received on April 1 can be processed for October 1 starting dates (new fiscal year, when the cap of 65,000 + 20,000 starts fresh).

The Department of Labor is involved in the immigration and visitation of foreign workers for two important reasons. The first is to protect qualified American workers from losing jobs to foreign workers. The second is to ensure that the foreign workers are paid at the prevailing or actual wage, to guard against wage depression for American workers and protect foreign workers from being underpaid. The employer must make a prevailing wage determination and attest to paying the foreign worker at or above that wage in the labor condition agreement, which must be certified by the Department of Labor before the H-1B visa petition can be filed.

The post H-1B Visa 2015 Statistics appeared first on Wood Immigration Law.

The Immigration Law That Will Make the United States a Global Soccer Powerhouse

For soccer (futbol) fans in the United States, it has been a struggle to slowly ingratiate soccer into the American sports pantheon, which is dominated by football, football, college football, and occasionally baseball. Soccer has been rising in prominence, thanks to some gritty and spectacular performances by the US Men’s and Women’s National Teams. The global game made enormous strides in 2014, as the country was struck with Soccer Fever during the World Cup. John Brooks deserves a statute for his goal against Ghana.

The Childhood Citizenship Act (CCA) of 2000 will make the United States a soccer power that will threaten the top teams. This month, 17 year old Gedion Zelalem expedited the process to obtain his passport. He has become a US citizen and will be eligible to play for the U.S. national team. The CCA is the reason why. Zelalem’s father turned his Permanent Residency into US Citizenship in 2014. As Zelalem was still under 18, a lawful permanent resident and in his father’s custody, his father’s naturalization allowed him to receive US citizenship automatically, even though he was born in Berlin to two Ethiopian parents. Zelalem immigrated to the United States as an eight year old in 2005 and was eligible to join either Ethiopia, Germany, or the United States national teams.

There are many great soccer players in Zelalem’s situation. Many players in the European Union are faced with similar situations and have to choose a country based on citizenship laws and heritage, such as Jerome and Kevin Boateng, Adnan Janujaz, Lionel Messi, Diego Costa, Danny Welbeck, and Stephen El-Sharaawy. We are thankful that Zelalem has chosen the United States, much like the German-Americans chose the United States. Thank you Congress and thank you Zelalem. We wish Zelalem the best of luck as he starts his career with Arsenal FC and cannot wait to see him lead USMNT to international glory.

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State of the Union 

“Yes, passions still fly on immigration, but surely we can all see something of ourselves in the striving young student, and agree that no one benefits when a hardworking mom is taken from her child, and that it’s possible to shape a law that upholds our tradition as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.” – Barack Obama, January 20, 2015

The word ‘immigration’ was only uttered twice Tuesday night in President Barack Obama’s seventh State of the Union speech, but the immigration motif was prevalent throughout the address.

The president made quick mention of the inherent unfairness of breaking apart families to remove a low-enforcement priority mother from her US citizen children. That is the basis of DAPA (Deferred Action for Parental Arrivals). The guiding light of American immigration policy is family reunification. Dismantling families would run contrary to that. DAPA is receiving most of the attention from Obama’s November 20, 2014 Immigration speech, in which he announced a series of executive orders to make incremental improvements to the immigration system in the face of congressional paralysis, especially in 2007 and 2013-2014. The “hardworking mom” mentioned during the speech would be someone that DAPA would protect temporarily, for the sake of keeping families intact.

The president dedicated much of his speech to trumpeting the job creation, research & development, innovation, and overall economic improvement of the United States in recent years. Underlying these important markers is immigration. American businesses rely on non-immigrant and immigrant visas to succeed. There are currently 140,000 Emplyoment-Based visas available per year and the H-1B visa system has been criticized for years by American businesses, some politicians, and immigration advocates as being damagingly low. The president has vowed to make improvements throughout the immigration architecture. He has declared his intention to modernize the employment process for immigration. We eagerly anticipate these reforms, as they will be in the best interests of our country, our fellow citizens, and immigrants.

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“My presidency is entering the fourth quarter. Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter.”

The annual State of the Union is the president’s opportunity to sketch out an agenda for the year, emphasize his priorities, and deliver reprimands and congratulations. The broad topic of immigration is bound to receive some air time in the speech tonight. The past year has been an intensive year in immigration for President Obama, one in which Congress dithered on passing immigration reform and performed various legislative delay tactics on an important issue that seemed prime for change in 2012. After initially waiting for the midterm elections in November, President Obama announced a series of executive orders that to improve our overall immigration system in various ways. The highlights of the speech included work authorization for H-4 visa holders (dependents of H-1B visa holders), Deferred Action for Parent Arrivals (DAPA), expanding the provisional waiver, and a pledge to modernize the nonimmigrant and immigrant visa programs. Opposition to this approach culminated last week when the US House of Representatives voted against funding DAPA and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The Senate has yet to vote, but it is expected that it will vote against the bill.

We are excited to see the president’s speech as it pertains to immigration. We are hopeful that it will continue to build upon his immigration speeches from November, as our immigration system incrementally improves for the better of immigrants, non-immigrants, and United States citizens. We will recap our thoughts on the immigration portion of the State of the Union address later in the week.

The post Immigration in SOTU Tonight appeared first on Wood Immigration Law.

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments on whether the government is required to prove a connection between a drug possession conviction and a congressionally defined controlled substance for removal of a permanent resident under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA is the immigration law of the land and it allows for removal of non-US citizens for violations pertaining to controlled substances. The case is Mellouli v. Holder. Mellouli is a lawful permanent resident of the US from Tuisia. He was convicted for possession of drug paraphernalia in Kansas, but it is not clear what that substance it is and whether it is controlled or not. Mr. Mellouli argued that the government cannot remove him without proving the connection between the conviction and substance. He was appealing because the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that the conviction was covered under the INA.

Lawful permanent residents can be removed for any number of reasons. One of the benefits of US citizenship is a safeguard against removal. Permanent residents can be removed for drug convictions, aggravated felonies, among other crimes, even though they have legal status beyond just holding a visa. There are avenues for relief that can be argued for during removal proceedings. Famously, three permanent residents were removed for illicit group membership, despite having families of American citizens and being permanent residents for thirty years.

It is unknown when the Supreme Court will release its opinion of Mellouli v. Holder. We will be keeping an eye on this case, as it speaks on the important burden the government has in removing a non-citizen.

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There are options in the United States for victims of trafficking, criminal activities, and domestic violence. The amended Trafficking Victims and Protection Act in 2008 created the U and T visas. Although there remain some issues with these visas, such as no work authorization during their pending periods and low cap numbers, the U and T visas provide an avenue for many non citizens to obtain non-immigrant status. For the U visa, a person must have been the victim of a qualifying crime. Three more qualifying crimes are expected to be added to the list as part of President Obama’s executive action, but Notario Fraud is not expected to be among them. T visas are for victims of human trafficking. These are not green cards but can lead to permanent residency.

As Martin Luther King Jr Day is celebrated this time of year and we remember his legacy, let us remember that all human beings are born with equal dignity and deserve the opportunity to live with that dignity.

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