Global Immigration Blog : Immigration Lawyers & Attorneys : Jackson Lewis Law Firm : Labor Certification, Adjustment of Status

On April 9, 2010, USCIS announced that in the first week of accepting cap-subject H-1B filings for FY 2011, only 13,500 petitions had been received against the 65,000 regular cap and only 5,600 against the 20,000 master’s cap.

New H-1B visas are generally limited to 65,000 per fiscal year, with an extra 20,000 available to certain individuals with advanced degrees (the master’s cap). The fiscal year begins on October 1, and petitions are accepted beginning April 1.

The first week’s filings represent the fewest H-1B petitions initially filed in several years. In previous years, USCIS had received a substantially greater number of petitions on April 1 than H-1Bs available. Such a situation required lotteries to determine which petitions would be accepted for adjudication. The last lottery was held in 2008, when USCIS received over 160,000 initial H-1B petitions.

No lottery was held last year, where after the first week of filing, USCIS had received over 30,000 regular cap petitions and close to 20,000 master’s cap petitions. USCIS continued to accept applications for new H-1Bs until the limit was reached on December 21, 2009.

It appears that employers now have some flexibility in bringing on new H-1B workers for a start date of October 1, 2010 or later.
 

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On April 1, 2010, Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis announced DOL’s “We Can Help” campaign in Chicago, where she told an audience of union leaders and community members that the DOL “will not allow anyone to be denied his or her rightful pay — especially when so many in our nation are working long, hard and often dangerous hours." 

The nationwide "We Can Help" campaign, spearheaded by DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), is an outreach program directed at the nation’s low-wage and “vulnerable” workers, such as workers in construction, janitorial services, hotels, food services and home health care services industries. The program also addresses topics such as rights in the workplace and how to file a complaint with the WHD to recover wages owed. Additionally, the campaign underscores the awareness that wage and hour laws apply to all workers in the U.S. regardless of their immigration status. In conjunction with this enforcement program, DOL has added more than 250 field investigators nationwide to help in this campaign.

Additionally, the inter-governmental agencies’ concerted enforcement efforts should not be overlooked. An immigration worksite visit could potentially involve a concurrent or subsequent DOL WHD audit and vice versa. In DOL’s efforts to protect the “vulnerable” workers in the U.S., it is yet to be seen if DOL will follow the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s lead in potentially offering incentives to undocumented workers in order to gain cooperation from them to detect and determine an employer’s liabilities.

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Forbes.com recently explored the pitfalls faced by foreign business visitors attempting to enter the United States on short-term trips. Jackson Lewis’ Global Immigration practice group Partners Davis Bae and Sean Hanagan were quoted extensively. To read the article, click:

www.forbes.com/2010/03/04/how-to-get-us-visa-lifestyle-business-travel-visit.html

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