Insight, News, and Strategy on Immigration Matters Around the World
At a recent White House law enforcement event, President Barack Obama took the opportunity to pressure Republicans in the House of Representatives to present an immigration reform bill this summer in advance of the November mid-term elections.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has made comments supportive of immigration reform and issued a “statement of principles”…
USCIS has announced that all H-1B Cap-Subject Petitions selected in the H-1B lottery have officially been data-entered for the 2015 Fiscal Year. While Receipt Notices for these data-entered petitions likely will be sent in the next few weeks, unselected petitions are now in the process of being returned to the Petitioner or attorney of record.…
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) adjudicators have been giving heightened scrutiny to U.S. employers’ I-129 Petitions for L-1B status on behalf of “intracompany transferees.” These individuals are employees of U.S. employers’ foreign-based affiliates, subsidiaries or parent companies who possess “specialized knowledge.” Such knowledge is defined as particularized knowledge “of the organization’s product, service,…
On April 7, 2014, USCIS announced that it had received enough H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year 2015 beginning on October 1, 2014. On April 10, 2014, USCIS announced that it had received 172,500 petitions. USCIS has not announced the date on which it will conduct the random selection process.…
AUTHOR: Helen Pihlstrom.
Employers who have submitted cap-subject H-1B petitions should remember that additional actions may be necessary by their current employees who are working pursuant to F-1 Optional Practical Training employment authorization, or OPT. In many cases, an employee’s OPT employment authorization will expire in the spring or summer after an H-1B cap petition…
USCIS has announced that it will begin premium processing of H-1B petitions subject to the H-1B cap for Fiscal 2015 no later than April 28, 2014. (See www.uscis.gov). The annual “cap” on H-1B visas is 85,000. Normally, paying an additional filing fee of $1,225 and filing Form I-907 with an H-1B petition guarantee a…
The Department of Justice is investigating and fining employers who require specific documentation from employees during the I-9 employment eligibility verification process. DOJ’s Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) often relies on statistics showing a large proportion of employees presenting specific documentation during the I-9 process to determine whether to…
AUTHOR: Davis C. Bae.
E-Verify is a free online program for employers to verify Form I-9 data through government databases. Tentative Nonconfirmations (TNCs) are messages issued by E-Verify when information from an employee’s Form I-9 does not match data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA) records. E-Verify will alert…
An appeals court decision granting six undocumented workers standing to recover wages owed by their employer under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) will stand after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case on March 14.
The FLSA prescribes standards for minimum wage and overtime pay and provides employees with an avenue to…
AUTHOR: Robert Neale.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) will begin accepting new H-1B petitions against the upcoming Fiscal Year 2015 H-1B quota on April 1, 2014. This year’s H-1B season is expected to be similar to last year’s, during which the 85,000 “cap” on new H-1Bs was reached in the first week petitions…
