Insight, News, and Strategy on Immigration Matters Around the World
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has announced that Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) for eligible Haitians will be extended for an additional 18 months, from July 23, 2014, to January 22, 2016.
Current Haitian TPS beneficiaries must reregister during a 60-day period, from March 3, 2014, to May 2, 2014. In addition to reregistering,…
AUTHOR: Harry J. Joe.
The Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices is warning employers not to use forensic tools or techniques to assess the validity of any document presented for identification and employment authorization, or apply a different level of scrutiny based on the type of document presented by the…
The Acting Assistant Inspector General for Audits with the DHS Office of the Inspector General, Mark Bell, has made three recommendations for improving ICE’s implementation of its worksite enforcement strategy based on an audit of the agency (www.oig.dhs.gov). ICE is the DHS agency responsible for implementing the nation’s worksite enforcement strategy and protecting…
The Temporary Non-agricultural Employment 2011 H-2B Wage Rule for calculating the prevailing wage rates (“Rule”) has cleared one of the last hurdles to implementation by the U.S. Department of Labor, with a ruling by a federal appeals court in Philadelphia upholding the regulation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held on February…
On February 10, 2014, the Department of State finalized its regulation removing the requirement that Mexican citizens submit a TN petition with and obtain an approved TN petition from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) when seeking visa classification under the TN visa category. Under the final rule, Mexican citizens may apply for a TN…
Clothing manufacturer American Apparel reportedly agreed on January 17, 2014, to pay $4.8 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by its investors. The company’s investors claimed the company suffered substantial financial loss when it disclosed that, in 2009, one-third of its workforce was being terminated as the employees were not authorized to work…
The CATO Institute, a public policy research organization, has released results from a series of Freedom-of-Information-Act (FOIA) responses from the Verification Division of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) (the agency responsible for managing the E-Verify program) showing that as many as one-third of the TNC (tentative non-confirmation) responses from E-Verify could take at least…
Due to high demand, businesses must be ready to file their completed H-1B petitions on April 1. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) allocates 65,000 new H-1B visas each fiscal year, running October 1 – September 30. 20,000 more H-1Bs are reserved for individuals who received a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. educational…
A recent unpublished Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision has revived the discussion of whether spouses of E visa holders are required to apply for separate employment authorization in order to work lawfully in the United States. Immigration lawyers have long debated whether the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and its regulations provide automatic work…
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued new memoranda of understanding (MOUs) for E-Verify browser users and Web Services users and developers. The MOUs set out responsibilities for the user and the government regarding the online employment eligibility database. The MOUs became effective for new users on December 8, 2013, and will become…
