Today, our client and 22 individual and organizational plaintiffs, including family-based immigrant visa petitioners, diversity visa lottery winners, and nonimmigrant visa sponsors, including those who want to bring in healthcare professionals from abroad to help during the pandemic, sued to prevent the devastating effects of President’s Trump’s unlawful and unconstitutional immigration ban. Litigators from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Justice Action Center and Innovation Law Lab, with pro bono support from Mayer Brown LLP as Lead Counsel, filed the plaintiffs’ claims as an amended complaint in Gomez v. Trump, (copy attached) which had initially challenged President Trump’s April immigration ban. Today’s amended complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, marks the first legal challenge to the entirety of President Trump's immigration ban, which has been extended through the end of 2020.
Read MoreOn February 2015, DHS published a final rule providing employment authorization to spouses of certain H-1B nonimmigrants who are seeking employment-based lawful permanent resident (LPR) status.
Read MoreCan you believe that H-1B Season is upon us! Each year, I say it seems like yesterday we filed last year’s H-1B Cap Cases. This year is particularly true as we are still responding to Requests for Evidence and waiting for decisions on April 2018 H-1B Cap Cases. USCIS issued the most requests for evidence and denials it has ever issued on H-1B Cap cases. In fact, USCIS has stated that it issued requests for evidence in 70 percent of the H-1B Cap cases filed. So, what have we learned?
Read MoreLast month, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) hit its pre-mandated annual H-1B visa “cap” five days after April 1 (the first day they began accepting H-1B visa applications). Nominally, the cap affords for USCIS to issue 65,000 H-1B visas every year –– with an additional 20,000 reserved for applicants with a Master’s degree. That’s 85,000 visas issued in total. Fairly straightforward, right? Well, not exactly. If you take the trouble to pour over certain US immigration statistics supplied by the USCIS itself, you'll find that not only does the number of H-1B visas given out per year exceed the cap of 85,000 –– but it does so by a significant total. So, to clear up the confusion around H-1B visas in the wake of the latest season, here’s an analysis of the past ten years of H-1B stats.
Read MoreToday May , 2014, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today announced the publication of two proposed rules, including a rule to extend employment authorization to spouses of certain H-1B workers, and a proposal to enhance opportunities for certain groups of highly-skilled workers by removing obstacles to their remaining in the United States. It is hoped that Together these actions will help attract new businesses and new investment to the U.S. and ensure that the U.S. has the most skilled workforce in the world.
USCIS announced on April 7 that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap of 65,000 visas for fiscal year (FY) 2015. USCIS has also received more than the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions filed under the advanced degree exemption.