In a recent USCIS Stakeholders Meeting, AILA asked for clarification on how unused H-1B1s for Singaporean and Chileans are counted back. Under the Chile/Singapore Free Trade Agreement, 6,800 H-1B cases are reserved per cap for specialty occupation cases from Singapore and Chile. The USCIS responded to AILA by stating that unused H-1B1 numbers from a fiscal year […]

 The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has a Business Litigation Committee (BLC) and we met this week and the hot topic of discussion was the recently released Neufeld memo. There is a strong belief that the memo was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.  There is also the belief that the memo violates long-standing precedent and established […]

We have recently heard of accounts from H-1B workers entering from the Newark and Seattle airports encountering additional questioning, and in some cases expedited removal, by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers. It seems most of the cases are occuring out of the Newark aiport and are primarily aimed at Indian H-1B workers employed […]

At the annual AILA immigration conference last June, the USCIS promised that a memo would be forthcoming on the issue of  what constitutes an employer-employee relationship for H-1b purposes. On January 13th, the USCIS issued a memo providing guidance on this issue. This memo is especially important to petitioners who place H-1b workers at third-party sites, such as information […]

Recently, the USCIS, particularly, the California Service Center has imposed requirements on IT staffing companies employing H-1b workers that are not found in any statute or regulations.  The requirement to produce contracts from parties with which the petitioner has no direct relationship is impossible to meet and the Service Center knows it ! That, is in fact their […]