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At a time of increasingly aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, the California Service Center of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has notified certain stakeholders that the USCIS will be ramping up “administrative site visits” in connection with H-1B petitions filed by U.S. employers. This is an effort at enhanced enforcement in response to the…

Secretary Janet Napolitano has released the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Strategic Plan for Fiscal years 2012-2016. The plan, released on February 13, outlines broadly the Department’s missions and goals to align program activity to better serve the public. More importantly, the plan revisits mission performance benchmarks and projects how those benchmarks will change as…

Many multinational companies with global operations use L-1 visas to facilitate the transfer of their executives, managers and specialized knowledge personnel into the U.S. for temporary assignments. In the last couple of years, these companies have experienced extreme backlogs, denials and inconsistent challenges by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and Consular Offices.

The U.S. Chamber…

“Hi, this is Kevin."


“Hi Kevin, it’s Sally at ABC Company. We need your help again. ICE Special Agents came by the worksite again today and delivered a Notice of Inspection for our Forms I-9 and supporting documents. They limited the inspection to the I-9s for active AND separated employees hired after their last inspection, …

Speaking before the American public (and Snow White, the Seven Dwarfs, and Mickey Mouse at Disney World), President Barrack Obama announced an expansion of the Global Entry program, including the easing of B1/B2 tourist processing times at consular posts around the globe, among other things.

Global Entry is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection program…

The DOL Administrative Review Board has decided that employers are responsible for paying wages to H-1B foreign nationals who—but for a delay in the Social Security Account enumeration and card issuance process—would be actively employed. The same rule likely will be applied to other nonimmigrant workers who experience delays in Social Security number processing.

The…

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and The Partnership For A New American Economy have released a study that found that immigrants boost employment for U.S. natives. The purpose and goal of the study, by Madeline Zavodny and entitled “Immigration and American Jobs,” was to explore the effect foreign-born employees have on the overall U.S. job…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the U.S. Department of Justice’s challenge to Arizona’s Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (“S.B. 1070”). Last year, the DOJ filed a lawsuit challenging several of the Act’s provisions on federal preemption grounds, arguing the federal government has exclusive authority to address immigrations issues and…

Employers navigating the I-9 employment eligibility verification process for new hires are confronted with a gauntlet of confusing rules, standards, and exceptions to the rules that some have opined are deliberately designed to make the innocuous looking one-page form a magnet for errors. Such cynics cite the year-over-year increases in civil fines being levied by…

The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration has issued a final rule delaying the effective date of a new H-2B wage calculation regulation.

Throughout 2011, the DOL and the Small Business Association (among other interested groups) have been at odds over the proposed change to the way prevailing wages are calculated for H-2B workers.…