Business Immigration Insights

In 2019, the large policy and enforcement shifts signposted in 2017 and 2018 continued to play out with stricter immigration enforcement across the board. While we don’t expect to see seismic shifts in the coming year, there are a few issues to watch for in 2020.

(1) H-1B “Specialty Occupation” Definition Change Likely to Stall in Court

USCIS has indicated it will be announcing an official change to the definition of “specialty occupation.” While we have already seen a detrimental shift in the H-1B adjudication process, this would be an official regulatory change. We expect that any attempt to re-interpret the H-1B statute as narrowly as possible will face a lengthy court battle.

On February 20, 2019, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) submitted its proposed regulation to remove work authorization for certain H-4 spouses to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It is likely that OMB will complete its review within 30 days.

What happens next?

Once OMB completes its review, the proposed regulation will be made available for public comment. It remains to be seen whether USCIS will allow a 60-day comment period, or limit comments to 30 days, as it did with the H-1B lottery regulation, Registration Requirement for Petitioner Seeking to File ...

A year ago, we blogged about the changes we saw coming in 2018 for U.S. employers and their employees under the April 2017 Buy American / Hire American executive order.  Though widespread across visa and green card categories, those changes have all amounted to increasing obstacles for U.S. companies to hire, retain and sponsor foreign nationals.  H‑1B workers, their H‑4 spouses, F‑1 students, TN professionals under NAFTA (to be replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, once approved by Congress), and L‑1 managers and specialists who transfer into U.S ...

In a February 28, 2018, status update filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in the matter of Save Jobs USA v. United States Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) stated its inability to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”)  on the rescission of H-4 EADs by its initial intended timeframe of February 2018.  DHS now expects to issue the NPRM in time for publication in June 2018.

DHS explained that after review of the draft proposal by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, a determination ...

Due to the upcoming temporary suspension of premium processing for all H-1B petitions on April 3, 2017, USCIS has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of premium processing cases it has received.  The Nebraska Service Center, which processes all H-1B extension petitions for non-cap exempt employers containing no changes to the beneficiary’s terms of employment, has announced that it will focus its resources on processing H-1B petitions in accordance with premium processing requirements.