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A July 17, 2012 Seattle Times news article, Seattle ranks high in skilled workers on H-1B visas, reports on a new Brookings Institution study showing that while Seattle ranks high in the number of skilled foreign workers for H1B visas, the Seattle metropolitan area fails to benefit from H-1B user fee grants for local worker training. The Brookings report, The Search for Skills: Demand for H-1B Immigrant Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, notes that companies like Microsoft, Amazon, University … [Read more...]
Immigration and Firm News
June 15, 2012 by ·
School's out just in time for the Obama Administration to announce today in an interesting political move that it will grant deferred action status for would-be DREAM Act students. (See Spanish version of the announcement.) I say "would-be" DREAM Act students because Congress never did pass the DREAM Act. Various versions of the DREAM Act would have provided a path to legal status and citizenship for many young people whose parents brought them to the US illegally at a young age (or they … [Read more...]
June 12, 2012 by ·
In a rare case of bipartisan action, Congress passed legislation to add E-2 visas to the list of Treaty Investor countries. Historically, Israelis have only been able to use the E-1 Treaty Trader visa, but not the E-2 Treaty Investor visa. E-1 visas require a primarily Israeli owned US company engaged in substantial trade in goods or services between the US and Israel. Otherwise, Israelis have had to use the EB-5 permanent residence investor program, L or H visas depending upon the scenario. … [Read more...]
April 25, 2012 by ·
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) heard oral arguments in Arizona v. US. The statement of the case as presented to SCOTUS was as follows: Arizona enacted the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (S.B. 1070) to address the illegal immigration crisis in the State. The four provisions of S.B. 1070 enjoined by the courts below authorize and direct state law-enforcement officers to cooperate and communicate with federal officials regarding the enforcement of … [Read more...]
March 25, 2012 by ·
When I was about 16, I asked my father, "Why are most songs about love?" My father, ever the wise one, responded: "Why don't you write that down on a piece of paper and put it somewhere that you will not forget. Then open it up when you are about 25." Amazingly, I did just that! (More likely, I forgot I wrote it down and then stumbled upon the note years later.) While I don't have the perfect answer beyond the usual cliches of "love is what makes the world go 'round", or "love is universal", I … [Read more...]
The Perils of Immigrant Visa Processing Abroad: Why Congress Should Eliminate the 3 and 10-Year Bars
February 9, 2012 by ·
CNN reports on a heartbreaking story Dangerous path to legal status about a young woman, Tanya Nava, who applied for her immigrant visa or green card at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, and now regrets that she ever did. Her husband, Jake Reyes-Neal, an American citizen and father of their child, had sponsored Tanya, only to be killed in the process while waiting with his wife to get her visa. Because Ms. Nava evidently had been in the U.S. illegally since she was a young girl, her physical … [Read more...]
February 3, 2012 by ·
Washington State appears poised in the next few days to be the seventh state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. It would go into effect on June 7, 2012. Assuming expected legal and referendum challenges fail, what would that mean for immigrant couples? Visas and Green Cards for Binational Couples Unfortunately, it will still be impossible to obtain a green card or permanent residence through sponsorship by a gay or lesbian US citizen or permanent resident spouse until Congress … [Read more...]
January 10, 2012 by ·
Today, I attended a USCIS Public Engagement Teleconference at which USCIS and State Department officials provided further details about the January 6, 2012 USCIS Notice of Intent to issue regulations, discussed in my earlier blog post, USCIS Proposes Stateside Processing of I-601 Waivers: Know Before You Go?. Recapping briefly the USCIS proposal, regulation will be issued for public comment describing new procedures for how and where immigrant visa applicants will file their waiver applications … [Read more...]
January 6, 2012 by ·
Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced a "Notice of Intent" that it is considering issuing a rule change to allow a narrow class of specified immigrant visa applicants to process their I-601 waivers of inadmissibility in the U.S. This means that they would have a provisional decision about their waiver eligibility BEFORE they leave the U.S. to complete interviews at U.S. consulates abroad. The rule itself has not been issued. There will most likely be a period for … [Read more...]
January 5, 2012 by ·
On January 5, 2012, USCIS issued new draft templates for Requests for Evidence (RFE) concerning L-1 Intra-Company Transferee visas for multinational managers, executives and those with specialized knowledge. USCIS has been reviewing its policies and trying to streamline adjudications of different visa categories to insure more consistent adjudications among officers and offices. Over the last year, the agency has issued draft RFE templates and implementation policy memos in the temporary and … [Read more...]
