The CATO Institute predicts an endless wait due to a backlog for Indian immigrants with advanced degrees. The employment-based immigration system appears to be broken. Recently, the USCIS declared in its February 22nd Policy Memo that IT Consulting Companies and their use of third party arrangements may be a “legitimate and frequently used business [...]
Read this memo by Attorney Kidambi to know more about the Employer’s Training Obligation under the STEM OPT program and whether your company could complete Form I-983, Training Plan for STEM OPT Students.
In a letter dated, April 4, 2018, the Director of the USCIS ( Director Lee Francis Cissna was detailed to Chairman Chuck Grassley’s staff at the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2015 until earlier this year) outlined regulatory changes to the H-4 EAD program: With regard to regulations, our plans include proposing regulatory changes to remove [...]
Every year, over 8000 people attend the Cleveland Festival popularly known as the “Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana”. The schedule of the ten-day festival includes the who’s who of Indian classical music and dance, and brings together a tremendous outpouring of support from Indian cultural connoisseurs from all over the U.S. This year's Festival is dedicated to [...]
Introduction: On February 23, 2018, the USCIS issued Policy Memo PM-602-0157 (PM). It rescinds outright certain earlier memos and supersedes others and seeks to add to and complement the Neufeld Memo (“Determining the Employer-Employee Relationship for Adjudication of H-1B petition, Including Third-Party Site placements”). The following memos are no longer valid: “Contracts Involving H-1B Petitions” [...]
H-1B CAP season is upon us once again. It is time to recap and highlight some of things to bear in mind. Filing Your H-1B With the Correct Service Center In October last year, the USCIS made several changes to how certain H-1B petitions were to be filed. Two important changes were made to the [...]
I read with interest an article in the NY Times by David Leonhardt entitled, Lost Einsteins: The Innovations We’re Missing; the basis for the Article is a study by The Equality of Opportunity Project. The study seeks to analyze the lives of more than one million inventors in the United States to understand the factors [...]
From all indications, it is now apparent that the Trump administration policies have taken extraordinary precedence over business interests and long-established Service policy when it comes to the H-1B Visa. All year long, the administration has waged a silent and sometimes insidious battle to shut down the legitimate use of this visa category. It all [...]
President Trump signed his "Buy American, Hire American" executive order at a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on April 18th. While doing so, he rallied his base by first bashing NAFTA and then the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and promised to "make sure that more products are stamped with those wonderful words: ‘Made in the USA.'" [...]
Unsurprisingly, the current administration continues to explore options to target all forms of immigration for singular attention. Unfortunately, employment based immigration, which has largely escaped scrutiny is now under the magnifying glass! For as long as I can remember, USCIS has been increasingly overwhelmed by their workload contributing to slower and slower immigration processing times. [...]