It has been reported by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has cleared for publication an interim regulation titled “Petitions Filed on Behalf of H-1B Temporary Workers Subject to the Annual Numerical Limitation.” It is believed that this rule addresses the filing of duplicate petitions in the upcoming H-1B “lottery.” […]

The National Foundation for American Policy has just released a white paper which concludes that adding H-1B workers actually adds US jobs.  While at first blush this seems surprising, it really isn’t in a modern service based economy.  Networking effects have recently been proven to add productivity at a greater rate than individual components acting […]

Here is the link to the decision (page down to the fourth page):
http://www.bibdaily.com/pdfs/AAO%20EB2%20Wada.pdf

The AAO, one of the Courts of Appeals in the immigration system, recently approved an EB2 I-140 for an individual with a full MS degree that had been attained following a 3 yr. Bachelor’s program. This is a major victory as the USCIS Service Center (particularly the Nebraska Service Center) had been issuing denials in […]

The U.S. government has announced higher civil fines against employers for immigration violations.
The new rule will take effect on March 27, 2008.  
The most significant cost increases can be found in our recent Immigration Alert. To subscribe to our Immigration Alerts, please click here.
 

The DOL recently released FY 2007 data on the PERM program. The complete report can be found at http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/pdf/PERM_Data_FY07_Announcement.pdf  The data revealed that there was an 86% approval rate. The data also revealed that almost 50% of the cases filed required MS degrees or higher which indicates that the EB2 category may remain retrogressed for the foreseeable […]

HLG’s February BIM has been published.  Our featured article discusses the intersection of the H-1B visa and the Labor Certification and was written by HLG’s Amy Dalal.  Click here to read this month’s issue.

HLG often gets questions on H-1 dependency, and the rules assocaited with H-1 dependency.  Back when the regulations were first drafted, we distributed a Memo to all clients explaining these rules.  The Memo is no less relevant today.

We get many questions about H-1 exempt petitions.  The starting point is to ask if the petitioner is a:
1) a University; or
2) a non-profit that is ”related” to a University; or
3) A Non-Profit research organization; or
4) A Non-Profit government research organization
The legal issue is what constitutes “related”.   The relevant USCIS Memorandum suggest that the two related organizations must either be co-owned […]

On Feb 4th, the USCIS issued a new policy stating that they will proceed with the adjudication of certain petitions, most notably I-485 cases if the FBI fingerprint check and IBIS check have both cleared but, where the FBI name check has been pending for more than 180 days without any negative information. It is […]