News
Trump and anti-immigrant zealots in the GOP love to confuse the immigration debate by labelling lawful family-based immigration laws and procedures with the ominous-sounding pejorative of “chain migration”. Don’t fall for it! The bottom line is that the law allows certain, not all, individuals who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents to petition for family members in the name of family reunification. This is a good thing. Read The New York Times' take here.
Timothy R. Bakken
Founder
A series of articles nicely describes the current state of the employment-based immigration environment in the U.S., the outlook for 2018, and responses from U.S. high tech businesses and employees.
First, requests for additional evidence and denials of H-1B Petition are at an all-time high. In fact, the CIS denied more than twice as many H-1B petitions in November 2017 compared to the same time last year. Second, Bloomberg summarizes expected trends in employment-based immigration in 2018, including increased enforcement and increased scrutiny of all immigrant and nonimmigrant petitions filed by U.S. employers. Finally, U.S. tech companies are increasingly looking to Canada as a base of operations due to Canada’s more welcoming and more easily navigable employment-based immigration system.
Timothy R. Bakken
Founder
This article describes what I am seeing in my direct experience in the world of U.S. business immigration. The CIS is issuing excessive requests for additional evidence even where an applicant is seeking an extension of an existing status with no changes in the underlying job duties, job location, or conditions of employment. Granted, the law properly requires petitioning companies and applicants to establish eligibility for the requested status. But, the current administration has issued guidelines that encourage CIS officers to demand more and more evidence of obvious facts (and give more leeway to deny petitions). One particularly egregious and comical example from my own practice: The CIS asked my client, a huge, well-known airline, to prove it was an existing business as part of its H-1B petition for a financial analyst. The petition was approved but only after unnecessary expense and time spent proving facts that are common knowledge to any living, breathing person. These new interpretations of existing law and regulations are inefficient and wasteful and contradict any professed goal of streamlining government bureaucracy. And, to be clear, I wholeheartedly support a crackdown on unscrupulous companies that abuse the H-1B program or any visa program. The current administration’s new rules and unreasonable interpretations of existing laws and regulations do not effectively address visa fraud because they treat law-abiding companies with long histories of closely following immigration law the same as companies that abuse the system.
Timothy R. Bakken
Founder
Following are updated links to some Department of State web pages. The old links will no longer work.
· U.S. Visa website: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas.html
· Visa Bulletin: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin.html
· Visa Appointment & Processing Wait Times: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/wait-times.html
The Trump crackdown on immigration only continues to worsen. Not only are arrests of immigration up significantly from this time last year, but the number of arrests that were performed on people with no past criminal history or convictions has also increased dramatically. When ICE is in search of a certain person, while they do not call their raids "sweeps", they often end up picking up more people along the way who were not the initial targets. In addition, during the legal process of applying for U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent resident status, ICE will often be waiting at the courthouse to pick up immigrants who have been charged with minor crimes before they have had a fair trial. Is this a good use of taxpayer funds? I don’t think so.
Trump is now targeting the STEM OPT program in his continued efforts to discourage legal high-skilled immigration to the United States. STEM OPT currently allows over 40,000 foreign STEM students at U.S. universities to work in the U.S. in a STEM field for three years after graduation. President Bush conceived the program, Obama extended it, and now Trump is trying to end it, which will only hamper America's leading position in the world. What does this say about Trump’s professed support of a merit-based immigration system? And from a larger perspective, what message does it send about America’s historical role as a nation that welcomes immigrants and benefits from their economic and cultural contributions?
Timothy R. Bakken
Founder
