A week after the Stimulus Bill was signed into law and the dust has started to settle, we have compiled a summary of the key points of the Stimulus Bill’s restriction on TARP-recipient companies to issue new H-1B visas. The law became effective upon the stimulus bill’s enactment, February 17, 2009. It is important to [...]
Today, Tuesday, February 10, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote and approve a version of the Stimulus Bill which President Obama has been pushing very hard over the past weeks. The version of the Stimulus Bill contains a provision which would automatically and for a period of two years make all employers who are [...]
We have written about this requirement in the past, but it is now a final rule. Starting January 15, 2009, federal contractors and subcontractors will be required to begin using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ E-Verify system to verify their employees’ eligibility to legally work in the United States. Federal contracts awarded and solicitations issued [...]
An article in today’s Washington Post reports on the contract USCIS has signed with IBM to overhaul the way USCIS handles documents. As many of our clients know or have experienced first-hand, the agency’s pre-computer-age paper filing system is extremely frustrating. The current system incurs $100 million a year in archiving, storage, retrieval and shipping [...]
About the EB-5 Visa and Regional Centers Under section 203(b)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5), 10,000 immigrant visas per year are available to qualified individuals seeking permanent resident status on the basis of their engagement in a new commercial enterprise (generally of at least $1 million). Of the 10,000 investor [...]
USCIS has released the numbers of citizenship applications filed for the first six months of 2008. For the period January-June 2008, on average, there were approximately 46,000 citizenship applications each month. As a comparison, the monthly average for the same period in 2007 was approximately 115,000 citizenship applications. This marks a decline in the average [...]
After few weeks, the program entitled “Scheduled Departure” is about to end, according to the Associated Press. The program allowed illegal immigrants who are subject to judicial order to leave the United States and who do not have a criminal record to turn themselves in voluntarily and be allowed to wrap up their departure in [...]
We wrote earlier today about the pending announcement that USCIS is restoring the possibility of filing I-140 via premium processing. As we discussed earlier, the premium processing is limited to workers who are nearing the end of their sixth year in H-1B nonimmigrant status. The premium processing procedure will guarantee 15 calendar-day response by USCIS for [...]
The U.S. Department of Justice announced May 1, 2008, that it has imposed a civil fine of $45,000 to iGate Mastech, Inc., a Pittsburgh computer consulting company in connection with the company's alleged discrimination against United States citizens in its employment practices and advertisements. Please read the full article for details on this civil fine settlement.
Earlier in February, the Office of Foreign Labor Certification at the Department of Labor released its official FY 2007 data covering cases processed under the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM). The PERM data provides an insight into the level of demand for U.S. jobs in different industry sectors and geographic areas.