| | The Business Immigration Monthly is Hammond Law Group’s news eZine, directed at international workers and employers seeking the most up-to-date news on U.S. immigration issues, specifically those that impact workers on H, L, E, and O visas and workers seeking permanent residency. News items will be of particular interest to those in the Healthcare, IT and staffing industries.
Featured Article
Immigration Compliance: Would Your Company Pass the Test?
Written by Sherry Neal, Partner
http://www.hammondlawfirm.com/monthly/featured-article-august-2009.pdf
September Visa Bulletin
The Department of State has released the September Visa Bulletin. There has been huge movement forward in both EB2 India and EB2 China more than a year forward to January 8, 2005. Hopefully, this trend will continue. EB3 still remains unavailable across the board and shall remain unavailable the remainder of the fiscal year.
http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin_4558.html
H-1B Cap Not Reached Yet!!!
As of August 14th, USCIS announced that it has received 45,000 H-1B petitions counting toward the Congressionally-mandated 65,000 cap. USCIS continues to accept regular cap-subject H-1B cases. The Masters cap has received the full subscription of 20,000 petitions. USCIS continues to accept Masters cases since their experience is that not all accepted cases will be approvable.
http://www.uscis.gov/
Knock, Knock...Who's There? The USCIS
Recently the USCIS has been making “surprise visits” to the US worksites of companies that sponsor H-1B and L-1 nonimmigrant workers. These include some large US financial services companies and IT consulting companies. USCIS workers will come with a checklist of questions designed to confirm the identity of the employer that filed the petition on behalf of the employee and to verify that both are in compliance with the terms and conditions of the visa. These visits are part of the expansion of the USCIS Administrative Site Visit and Verification Program that was launched at the beginning of the fiscal year. The objective of the visits is to detect fraud and abuses of the H-1B visa program. Ironically, the USCIS lacks the authority to investigate the employer’s compliance with the visa obligations, a power given to the Department of Labor but for which generally they do not use unless a complaint is made. USCIS spokesperson David Santos confirms that compliance with the investigation is voluntary, a fact that most employers do not realize when the USCIS shows up unannounced. However, despite this, it is best to cooperate with the USCIS in these investigations.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/081209-h-1b-visa-sponsors-surprise-youre.html?page=1
Is your company audit ready? If not, contact your HLG attorney for help getting ready for these surprise government visits.
I-9 Audits on the Rise
In this era of increased enforcement, it should come as no surprise that the US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has announced the increase in I-9 audits. John Morton, the new chief of ICE said that the agency is set to increase the number of companies it will audit and systematically impose fines on violators. Mr. Morton said there are currently 654 companies being audited and more are in the pipeline. “You are going to see audits regularly and on a larger scale…You will see the resuscitation of…civil fines,” states Morton. This audit intensification stems directly from Obama’s administration which has made employers and compliance the cornerstone of its immigration policy, as Morton reiterates “If we are going to have serious change, we must make sure the employer community is complying with the law.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125055700606938851.html
The Passing of an Immigration Hero
With the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy on August 25, 2009, we lose a political leader in immigration. Starting from when he was a junior Senator in 1965 when he worked to remove discriminatory quotas and open the doors to persons of all nations, including immigrants from Latin America an Asia. He continued the fight for immigration reform throughout his life, leading the way for IRCA in 1986, and the reform of family and employment based immigration systems in 1990. He was a lifetime public leader working to promote and protect the rights of all Americans and to welcome immigrants to the US searching for the American Dream. He once commented, "From the windows of my office in Boston … I can see the Golden Stairs from Boston Harbor where all eight of my great-grandparents set foot on this great land for the first time. That immigrant spirit of limitless possibility animates America even today." He was a leader of a caliber that we may not see again and one that paved the way for the many immigrants who have come to settle in the US and give back to the country as he had hoped. He will be missed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kennedy
Government Seek $5M for H-1B Fraud from New Jersey IT Company
Last week the US government filed a new indictment against Vision System Group Inc., the New Jersey IT company alleged to have committed gross H-1B fraud. If the federal prosecutors win their case against Vision System they will ask the court to award $4.9 million in forfeited assets (a reduction of $2.5 million from what was requested in the government’s initial indictment). The case, which is being heard in the US District Court in Iowa is set to be the largest H-1B fraud case to be brought by the government. In its indictment, the government alleges H-1B workers were being paid lower than the prevailing wage rates and were not being paid for bench time. The USCIS is estimating that as many as one in five petitions filed by Vision System has some error to them, including fraud. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137317/U.S._government_seeks_5M_in_H_1B_fraud_case
Exodus of Immigrants from the US
In a recent BusinessWeek article entitled “Skilled Immigrants on Why They’re Leaving the US,” author Moira Herbst comments on how a combination of the waiting time for green cards, a soft US economy, and incentives from countries abroad are causing an exodus of the “best and brightest” skilled immigrants from the US. It is estimated that nearly 200,000 skilled workers from India and China will return to their homes abroad over the next five years, a stark increase from the 100,000 that returned over the past twenty years.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jul2009/db20090724_178761.htm
Mike Hammond to Speak at Immigration Forum
The Marksell Group will be holding an immigration forum as part of their Toronto Career Fair on Friday September 11th from 2pm to 4:15pm, in Toronto, Canada. The forum will deal primarily with immigration issues impacting the recruitment of healthcare professionals from Canada. Mike Hammond, the founding partner of HLG, will be a speaker on the forum panel. For more details contact your HLG attorney and/or see: http://www.healthcareersinteraction.com/
HLG's Sherry Neal to Publish Healthcare Article
AILA is publishing an article by Sherry Neal in its upcoming book, Nurses and Allied Healthcare Workers. The book is expected to be released later this year and sold through www.aila.org.
Did You Know?
In this new section, each month HLG will be sharing a basic rules and regulations that both employers who hire nonimmigrant workers and employees who are on nonimmigrant visas should know.
Did you know that:
An employer must pay an employee the higher of the actual wage or prevailing wage listed on their labor condition application throughout their time in the US on an H-1B visa (this includes Bench Time!).
|
|
