Sen. John McCain found a friendly audience last week at a business roundtable held at a Silicon Valley technology firm that included Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Meg Whitman, the former chief executive officer of eBay who was a leading supporter of Mitt Romney but has since begun raising money for Republican McCain, and a number of executives from Silicon Valley firms in San Jose, California. Read the rest of this entry »
June 4th, 2008
May 18th, 2008
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced this month that it is publishing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to increase the maximum amount of time a Trade-NAFTA (TN) professional worker from Canada or Mexico can remain in the United States before seeking readmission or obtaining an extension of stay. The proposal will extend the maximum period of admission for TN workers from one year to three years, the same term that USCIS currently may grant to H-1B specialty occupation workers. Read the rest of this entry »
April 21st, 2008
The USCIS issued an important announcement regarding 2009’s H-1B program: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued an interim final rule today that prohibits employers from filing more than one petition for an H-1B visa for a single employee in a fiscal year. The change is intended to promote a fair and systematic process for H-1B petitioners. This rule ensures that companies filing H-1B petitions that are subject to numerical limits will have an equal chance to receive consideration for an H-1B worker.
April 21st, 2008
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on April 8th that it has received enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2009. USCIS has also received more than 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of persons exempt from the cap under the “advanced degree” exemption. Before running the random selection process, USCIS will complete initial data entry for all filings received during the filing period ending on April 7, 2008. Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce the precise day on which it will conduct the random selection process.
April 21st, 2008
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it would allow F-1 students who are the beneficiaries of selected H-1B petitions for fiscal year (FY) 2009 to request a change of status in lieu of consular notification.
This short-term measure follows an April 8, 2008 interim final rule that, among other actions, automatically extends the F-1 status of qualifying students who are the beneficiaries of approved H-1B petitions to cover the gap between the expiration of a student’s F-1 status and the H-1B employment start date of October 1. To obtain the automatic extension, a student must be the beneficiary of an H-1B petition filed for the next fiscal year (with an October 1 employment start date) and have requested a change of status. For F-1 student beneficiaries of petitions that USCIS subsequently rejects, denies, or revokes, or for those who violate their status, the automatic extension terminates at that time.
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April 21st, 2008
H-1B visa numbers will be available again on April 1, 2008. Our office is now accepting and preparing visa application for the 2008 annual H-1B quota.
H-1B is a Temporary Work Visa For Professionals who want to work in the U.S.
H-1B is for persons possessing at least a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent, being offered employment by a U.S. company in a specialty occupation for which he or she is qualified. The first step to hiring most H-1B workers from outside the U.S. is for the employer to file a labor condition application (LCA) with the Department of Labor (DOL). Then the employer is required to file the LCA approval notice with the I-129 petition.
Some terms and conditions of the H-1B classification are the following:
April 18th, 2008
All too often human resource managers tell me that for their company to stay competitive they must be able to recruit the best and brightest workers from around the world. Yet their recruitment efforts are continuously blocked by complex bureaucratic red tape (e.g. 8 CFR §214.2 (h) et seq.).
Do I have a game plan?
Congress recognized the importance of being able to play on an even field in the global economy when it passed the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act (AC21). Whatever occupational needs exist, new immigrants and non-immigrants are part of the dynamic that continues to grow the economy and contribute to this country’s productivity. Read the rest of this entry »