The times they are a-mournin’ for proponents of immigrant rights and immigration reform. While Pope Francis shows the world how to love by embracing and praying with a tumor-scarred man, immigrants-rights activists and immigration-reform pragmatists are at war among themselves over tactics in the battle to achieve just solutions to our nation’s dysfunctional immigration problems. They who should be allies … Continue Reading
Tag Archives: USCIS
The L-1 Intracompany Transferee Visa Facing Attack — from All Branches of the Federal Government (Part II)
Posted in Administrative Appeals Office - USCIS, Congress on Immigration, Consular Officers, Courts on Immigration Law, GOP on Immigration, L-1 Visa, Obama Administration on Immigration, Requests for Evidence (RFEs), USCIS[Bloggers Note: The second of my two-part blog post below first appeared in Seyfarth Shaw LLP‘s September 10 and September 12 “Employment Law Lookout” Blog]
The L-1 Intracompany Transferee Visa Facing Attack — from All Branches of the Federal Government (Part II) By Angelo A. Paparelli
As noted in our last post, American businesses which offer U.S. secondments to … Continue Reading
The L-1 Intracompany Transferee Visa Facing Attack — from All Branches of the Federal Government (Part I)
Posted in Administrative Appeals Office - USCIS, Congress on Immigration, Consular Officers, Courts on Immigration Law, L-1 Visa, Obama Administration on Immigration, State Department, USCIS[Bloggers Note: My two-part blog post below first appeared in Seyfarth Shaw LLP‘s September 10 and September 12 “Employment Law Lookout” Blog]
The L-1 Intracompany Transferee Visa Facing Attack — from All Branches of the Federal Government (Part I) By Angelo A. Paparelli
U.S. employers have likely grown accustomed to the longstanding controversy over the highly coveted H-1B … Continue Reading
Immigration Progress: A Good EB-5 Policy Memo Could Still Be Better
Posted in Adjustment of Status, Congress on Immigration, EB-5, I-9s, Immigrant Visas, Immigration and Entrepreneurship, Immigration Reform, Immigration Regulations, Investor Immigration, Legal Representation, Obama Administration on Immigration, USCISFrench philosopher and aphorist, François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire, wrote in Italian that “Il meglio è l’inimico del bene [the perfect is the enemy of the good].”
The wisdom of this saying, championed by pragmatists everywhere, comes to mind upon reading a May 30, 2013 Policy Memorandum (PM) issued by the Department of Homeland … Continue Reading
Immigration Quota Reform: Waste Not, Want Not
Posted in Congress on Immigration, Immigration Quotas, Immigration Reform, Obama Administration on Immigration, State Department, USCISFrugality, something second nature to our colonial forebears, is a trait we Americans seem to have forgotten. We are profligate in our material acquisitions and in their disposition. (Witness the growing mountains of toxic electronic waste that are almost as hard to be rid of as spent nuclear fuel.) Saving for a rainy day is not the meme it … Continue Reading
The New I-9: Why Now When We Need Immigration Amnesty for Employers?
Posted in Congress on Immigration, DHS Technology Reforms, Enforcement/USICE, I-9s, Immigration Lawyers, Immigration Reform, Immigration Regulations, Obama Administration on Immigration, USCIS
Irony was plentiful last week in Washington and around the country.
One particularly hawkish Republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (who never met a war-on-terror strategy he disliked), glommed onto Senator Rand Paul’s filibustery droning against drones in protest of John … Continue Reading
Memo to Immigration Reformers: “First catch your [EB-5] hare!”
Posted in Congress on Immigration, Consular Officers, Customs and Border Protection, Democrats on Immigration, General Immigration, GOP on Immigration, Immigration Agency Expertise, Immigration Reform, Investor Immigration, Obama Administration on Immigration, State Department, USCISWinston Churchill, whose mother was American (Jennie Jerome of Brooklyn), could just as well have been speaking about the components of comprehensive immigration reform. Instead he was commenting on the Allies’ post-World War II plans for world governance when, in the summer of 1942 with the war yet unwon, he said:
I hope these speculative studies will be entrusted mainly to … Continue Reading
Dear Immigration Director: Let Our Dreamers Go!
Posted in Adjustment of Status, Advance Parole Travel Authorization, IMMI Awards, Obama Administration on Immigration, USCIS
I was escorted to the woodshed on January 15, a very public woodshed, and deservedly so. Alejandro (Ali) Mayorkas, the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), politely took me to task at a Public Engagement during the Q & A session when I raised two points. One involves the subject of a future post. The other — … Continue Reading
Immigration and the Elections: Attention and Imagination Required
Posted in Democrats on Immigration, DREAM Act, GOP on Immigration, Immigration Lawyers, Immigration Reform, Legal Representation, USCIS[Blogger’s note:
Dear Readers: I promise that this post is indeed about immigration and the quadrennial election on Tuesday. Please read to the end, beyond the meandering yet relevant introduction, to see the connection.]
Just over four years ago, David Foster Wallace, a gifted, troubled writer of wide acclaim, took his life. Fans of his writing, myself included, have marveled at his intelligence, … Continue Reading
Immigration’s NannyStateGate: Picking EB-5 Winners and Losers
Posted in Congress on Immigration, Employment-Based Immigration, Investor Immigration, USCISWith one week to go before the election, the final days have been marked by heated arguments over the proper role of government. In the prime battleground state of Ohio, the Presidential candidates have crisscrossed virtually every county, arguing over whether and when government should intervene to save or create jobs.
Political comic, Jon Stewart, recently offered his usual sarcasm-saturated take on … Continue Reading
Hey, Immigration Bureaucrats: Corporations Are NOT People!
Posted in DOL, Employment-Based Immigration, H-1B Visas, Immigration Regulations, Obama Administration on Immigration, USCISAt least by 1602 with the chartering of the Dutch East India Company, and perhaps as early as the 1300s with the formation of the first colleganza, a rudimentary joint-stock company set up in Venice to share the cost of a trade expedition, human beings and corporations have cohabited the earth.
Although the shared habitation of human and juridical beings has never been … Continue Reading
The EB-5 Investor Immigration Program: Green Shoots or Chutes and Ladders?
Posted in Investor Immigration, USCISThe EB-5 immigrant investor green card program resembles a multi-country version of Chutes and Ladders, the “game of rewards and consequences“. In the EB-5 edition, the ladder represents progress toward a green card and the chute is an ICE-tunneled luge ride ending in immigration court at a removal hearing.
This comparison only begins to approach the bewildering … Continue Reading
Immigration Brainstorming and DREAMstorming
Posted in DREAM Act, Enforcement/USICE, Fraud Detection & National Security (FDNS), Immigration "Tribes", Immigration Law Complexity, Immigration Lawyers, USCISAndrew Jackson had his “Kitchen Cabinet,” Franklin Roosevelt his “Brain Trust.” Seth Godin has his “Tribes,” web-based “silos of interest.”
I’ve been a member of many tribes (as I write this I’m recalling my tattered T-shirt from my own and my adult daughter’s Indian Princess days, many moons ago [click here to see the shirt]).
In … Continue Reading
Immigration D-Day for DACA: Get Protection!
Posted in DREAM Act, Enforcement/USICE, Guest Columns, Immigration Law Complexity, Immigration Reform, Immigration Regulations, Obama Administration on Immigration, Unauthorized Practice of Immigration Law, Unlawful Presence, USCIS[Blogger’s note: Tomorrow, August 15, 2012, is perhaps as momentous to DREAMers as D-Day, June 6, 1944, was to The Greatest Generation. The invasion of Normandy marked the end of World War II in Europe and the fall of a tyrannical Nazi regime that made mincemeat of the rule of law.
Though the comparison may seem hyperbolic to some, I remember … Continue Reading
Immigration Quibbles and Bites: The Fortnight in Review
Posted in Courts on Immigration Law, EB-5, General Immigration, Investor Immigration, Obama Administration on Immigration, USCISIt’s been a momentous, startling and exasperating two weeks. The Supreme Court ended the term with three blockbuster decisions, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) held a less-noticed public engagement that knocked the socks off one important segment of the stakeholder community.
In Arizona v. United States, the Court — notwithstanding the ludicrous claims of victory from AZ Gov. … Continue ReadingL-1B Spécialité Horrifique: The Immigration War on the Consulting Industry (And Its Customers)
Posted in Consular Officers, Immigration Discrimination, Immigration Regulations, L-1 Visa, Obama Administration on Immigration, State Department, USCISLast week, the American Council on International Personnel (ACIP) convened its 40th annual symposium in Pentagon City VA, just outside Washington DC, an event attended by scores of immigration managers and corporate counsel hailing from Fortune 500 and Forbes 100 companies.
A week earlier, on the other side of the globe, hedge funds and institutional investors following the IT … Continue Reading
Immigration-Agency Lawbreaking Revealed: USCIS’s EB-5 “Tenant-Occupancy” Scandal
Posted in Congress on Immigration, Guest Columns, Immigration Agency Expertise, Investor Immigration, Requests for Evidence (RFEs), USCIS[Bloggers Note: This post is authored jointly by Brandon Meyer and Angelo A. Paparelli]
Some scandals raise eyebrows; others cause real economic harm. The one we’re about to reveal — known as “tenant occupancy” — does both. It makes the GSA’s Las Vegas cavorting pale in comparison. (Immigration lawyer alert: For those with prurient interests [you know who you are], “tenant occupancy” … Continue Reading
Pre-Election Bipartisanship — Except on Immigration, Where Sen. Grassley Stubbornly Obstructs
Posted in Congress on Immigration, Consular Officers, Employment-Based Immigration, Fraud Detection & National Security (FDNS), H-1B Visas, Immigration Reform, Obama Administration on Immigration, State Department, Unauthorized Practice of Immigration Law, USCISAt President Obama’s signing ceremony for the JOBS Act last week, White House guests slapped high fives with bipartisan glee. They came to the Rose Garden to help “Jumpstart Our Business Startups,” as the new law’s title optimistically promises to do. With pen in hand, the President joined in the merriment, observing that it’s not about blather but action:
One … Continue Reading
Powdered Wig Immigration with the Lawyer as Potted Plant
Posted in Fraud Detection & National Security (FDNS), Legal Representation, Unauthorized Practice of Immigration Law, USCIS
Many thoughts rushed through my mind as I read the heartening headline to a press release issued January 19 by the American Immigration Council (“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Takes Steps to Improve Noncitizens’ Access to Legal Counsel“).
What did USCIS do to improve access to lawyers? Did it instruct the agency’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate… Continue Reading
The DHS Inspector General Report on Fraud Detection at USCIS: Pious Immigration Baloney
Posted in Administrative Appeals Office - USCIS, Courts on Immigration Law, Fraud Detection & National Security (FDNS), USCIS, USCIS OmbudsmanThe historian said to the venture capitalist, “Let’s drop the pious baloney,” as each sought the highest office in the land. No, this post is not the set-up to a joke, except perhaps a nod to the risible circular firing squad that the GOP presidential candidates have formed.
And it’s not about a sliced and packaged meat sausage, more accurately … Continue Reading
Power-Mad Career Immigration Bureaucrats Cry Wolf, Spook DHS Leaders
Posted in Border Issues & CBP, Congress on Immigration, Extreme Hardship, Immigrant Visas, Labor Unions, Obama Administration on Immigration, Unlawful Presence, USCIS, Waivers of InadmissibilityImmigration stakeholders howled with joy this week over an announcement by Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), and the DHS agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), about the forthcoming publication of a new immigration regulation.
Usually, the intention to publish a rule is no cause for huzzahs. But this Notice of Intent is different. It presages a … Continue Reading
Telling Immigration Stories: It’s Not Just about Code Sections
Posted in Adjustment of Status, Enforcement/USICE, Extreme Hardship, General Immigration, Hate speech, Immigrant Visas, Immigration Law Complexity, USCISFrom the first prehistoric evenings sitting around campfires, humans have been telling stories. Heroic myths, fairy-tale fables, oral histories — all have been seared into heart and memory through the power of narrative. Civil and criminal trials are merely stylized forms of storytelling. Journalism’s hook, theatre’s Sturm und Drang, reality television’s sour and sweet confections — all are bottomed on stories.
Although … Continue Reading
Missive from Mumbai: Why Are U.S. Immigration Agencies Attacking India and Hurting America?
Posted in Border Issues & CBP, Business Visitors, Consular Officers, Foreign policy, H-1B Visas, L-1 Visa, State Department, USCISAt least when it comes to India, Yogi Berra had it wrong. It’s not déjà vu all over again.
Blogging this weekend from my hotel room in Mumbai, I vividly recall my first trip to India in 1993. Invited as part of an American Bar Association delegation, I spoke in New Delhi on “Nonimmigrant Visa Options for Computer Software Professionals.”
My talk took … Continue Reading
Entrepreneurs in Immigration Residence Are Set to Occupy USCIS
Posted in Congress on Immigration, DREAM Act, Employment-Based Immigration, General Immigration, Immigration Reform, Labor Unions, USCIS, USCIS OmbudsmanThe Occupy Wall Street movement began with a poster, a word cloud, a QR Code and three lines of text:
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET
September 17th. Bring tent.
Steve Jobs launched his massively successful “Think Different” rebranding campaign for Apple in 1997 with a TV commercial and this script:
Here’s to the Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The … Continue Reading