Immigration

The Obama administration has touted a number of new initiatives aimed at encouraging immigrant entrepreneurship and retention of high-tech workers in the U.S. These are commendable and this author applauds these efforts.

It’s that time of year again. The Department of State will begin accepting requests to register for the 2016 Green Card Lottery. Online registration begins today, October 1, 2014 and will conclude on November 3.

Fiscal year 2015 cap-subject H-1B petitions selected and approved by USCIS will be valid starting October 1, 2014. However, as October 1, 2014 approaches, many cap-subject H-1B petitions remain pending at both the California and Vermont Service Centers.

It is almost October 1st, when thousands of new H-1B visas will become effective with the onset of the US government's 2015 fiscal year. In light of this, here are six little known but important facts about H-1B visas:

As we reported on Monday, due to a massive software failure of the Department of State’s Consular Consolidated Database (CCD), there continue to be delays in the issuance of visas at consular posts around the globe.

Multiple reports have confirmed that the U.S. Department of State’s global database for issuing travel documents recently crashed. While the system has been restored, it is operating at reduced capacity and significant backlogs have developed.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) Directorate has recently begun implementation of an L-1 site inspection program in response to an August 2013 report released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) titled “Implementation of L-1 Visa Regulations.”

The Embassy of India in Washington, D.C. has named Cox & Kings Global Services Pvt. Ltd. (“CKGS”) as the new service provider for Indian Visas, Overseas Citizenship of India (“OCI”), Person of Indian Origin (“PIO”), Renunciation Certificates, and additional support services. CKGS will begin its India visa services and related operations on May 21, 2014.

Join two of our colleagues from the Employment, Labor & Benefits Practice for this free webinar on drafting restrictive covenants, to be held on May 28th. The panelists include Mintz Levin attorneys Bret Cohen and Mitch Danzig, and Jeff Lambert, the Chief Legal Officer of our client The Active Network.

In April 2013, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) introduced electronic Forms I-94, enabling nonimmigrants entering the U.S. via air and sea to easily access their Form I-94 Arrival/Departure Records online. As of  May 1, 2014, this electronic system has been expanded to provide access to an individual’s full arrival and departure history for the past five years.

On April 7, 2014, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had received more than enough H-1B petitions to meet the numerical limit for fiscal year 2015 cap-subject H-1B visas, which includes both the 65,000 general H-1B cap petitions as well as the 20,000 U.S.

The following opinion piece by Susan Cohen appeared in the December 20, 2013 issue of VentureBeat and is reprinted here with permission. The U.S. market is a magnet for foreign entrepreneurs.

The April 1, 2014 deadline for filing H-1B visa petitions for Fiscal Year 2015 will be here before you know it. We recently published an alert with more information on when you should file and H-1B caps.

This alert is a reminder of the rapidly approaching April 1, 2014 “deadline” for the filing of H-1B visa petitions for Fiscal Year 2015. Petitions for the new fiscal year, which starts on October 1, 2014, will be accepted by the government beginning April 1, 2014.

We applaud Microsoft Corporation and the numerous parties, including the American Immigration Council and the Chamber of Commerce, who filed amicus briefs last week in a consolidated Board of Alien Labor Certification (BALCA) case involving PERM labor certifications filed by Microsoft Corporation on behalf of several of its employees.

The Department of Labor (DOL) has issued guidance concerning the effects of the government shutdown on employers’ ability to file applications and other submissions as part of the PERM process.

In a welcome move that acknowledges the hardships caused by the government shutdown, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has advised that if an H-1B petitioner submits evidence establishing that the primary reason for failing to timely file an extension of stay or change of status request was due to the government shutdown, USCIS will consider the government shutdown as an extraordinary circumstance and excuse the late filing, provided that the petitioner meets all other applicable requirements.

As of October 17, 2013, the government shutdown in effect since October 1, 2013 has come to an end. The shutdown had negatively impacted immigration processing in matters handled by the Department of State, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and, most significantly, the Department of Labor (DOL). 

The impending shutdown of the U.S. federal government on October 1st will impact immigration services across a number of different government agencies. In this alert we address the impact of a shutdown on petitions, visas, and labor certifications.

Those who closely follow the world of U.S. immigration adjudication trends are painfully aware of the hostile attitude exhibited both by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) adjudicators and consular officials at U.S. consulates abroad towards L-1B “intracompany transferee” visa petitions.