In recent years, despite the U.S.’s rich history as a haven for ambitious immigrants, many foreigners looking to work in the U.S. have had to cope with increasingly restrictive immigration policies. As a result, the number of immigrant-founded startups in Silicon Valley, to take an example, has declined from 52.4% in 2005 to 43.9% in [...]
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) launched earlier today Preparing for the Oath: U.S. History and Civics for Citizenship, a Web-based learning tool designed to help immigrants prepare for the civics portion of the naturalization test. Designed as a self-study tool, Preparing for the [...]
A few days ago, on December 29, 2011, the USCIS Ombudsman has issued a report and set of recommendations urging USCIS to take proactive steps to ensure clear, consistent and predictable standards are applied to immigrant visa applications under the first employment-based preference category (EB-1) for aliens with extraordinary ability (EA). Background on the Current [...]
In late January 2011, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that they would begin testing their new Validation Instrument for Business Enterprises (VIBE) tool. About VIBE VIBE is a tool designed to enhance USCIS’s adjudications of certain employment-based immigrant and non-immigrant petitions such as I-140 and I-129. VIBE uses commercially available data to validate [...]
Our office has fielded numerous calls from a number of foreign nationals who are in the U.S. temporarily and whose departure plans have been disrupted by the infamous Icelandic volcano ash. For many in the U.S. whose departure travel arrangements were closely related to their I-94 expiration date, the disruption and delay in departure travel [...]
During a recent AILA conference, the Vermont Service Center (VSC) Director Dan Renaud told the audience that the performance review structure for adjudicating officers has recently changed. Pursuant to the new performance review structure, officers get credit for issuance of Requests for Evidence (RFES), in addition to issuing approvals and denials, under the previous performance [...]
Over the past months we have written extensively about the issues raised by today’s Wall Street Journal article “Slump Sinks Visa Program” but it is still an interesting read. Most of our readers are aware of the current H-1B quota and the fact that a substantial number of H-1B visas still remain available (for comparison, [...]
We wrote in September about the gap in expected revenue by USCIS following the filing fee increase of Summer 2007. We noted that the agency has a $282 million shortfall in expected revenues. As a result of the announced 2007 fee increase, USCIS saw a surge in applications and hiring in 2007, ahead of a hefty [...]
There has been quite a bit of legal activity in connection with the Bush administration executive order requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees as well as current employees directly working on a contract. Rule Goes Into Effect on September 8, 2009 On August 26, 2009, a U.S. [...]