US Immigration News & Commentary

Visa Bulletin

About a month in to the FY2011 H1B season only about a 1/5 of available regular cap visas have been applied for. Master’s cap cases are going a bit faster with almost a 1/3 of the available visas being applied for.

The USCIS H1B Numbers can be found here.

In many instances immigrants charged with a crime are not warned of the immigration consequences of either a guilty plea or a finding of guilt. This can result in some devastating consequences when that immigrant takes a plea deal which on the surface seems harmless – a small theft offense rather than a larger one for example – and does so without any counsel regarding any possible impact with regards to immigration or, in even more egregious cases, being told that there will be no consequence at all.

Unfortunately in many instances there are consequences. For example, one small theft offense may not render a permanent resident removable from the United States but that same offense might render that permanent resident inadmissible. That means if they leave the US they might be put into removal proceedings even if they wouldn’t have been otherwise.

The courts have long recognized that deportation is a very serious consequence and that immigrants deserve due process when faced with banishment from the United States.

Today the Supreme Court of the United States took another step in protecting the due process rights of immigrants. They ruled that criminal defense counsel for immigrants must advise their clients of the potential immigration consequences of a sentence. If a plea carries a risk of deportation the defense attorney must advise their client of that fact. If the defense attorney does not do so they have rendered ineffective assistance and if the client can prove their case was prejudiced because of the bad or nonexistent advice they may potentially have their case reopened.

The case is Padilla v. Kentucky

April 2010 Visa Bulletin is posted. EB3 still way backed up. EB2 backed up for India and China.

The icert system isn’t great to say the least but to file for an H1B visa you must have an approved LCA. Many employers are not in the system and it can take up to or over a week to find that out, a week to fix it, and a week to get an LCA approved. So that potentially adds 21 days to the that didn’t used to exist before.

So what to do? Since it’s unlikely that the H1B cap will be hit on April 1 (the day that H1B visas can first be filed) it probably won’t be an issue.

But if one is worried about the cap being reached quickly it’s possible to file the LCA before April 1 using a date before October 1 (the first day new visa numbers become available) as the start date. You can do this even if you put the earliest date (10/1) on the I-129 petition. Only drawback is that the end of the I-129 will be the end of the LCA and that will be three years from the date you applied at the latest. That means the H1B visa might get shorted a little bit but better that than no H1B visa right?

Cap exempt petitioners don’t have to worry about all this silliness of course.

Undocumented immigration is a problem. It’s not a problem that people are migrating here. That’s normal. It’s a problem because it’s a sign that the system is not responding quickly enough to migrants and economic forces.

Right-wingers think it’s a problem because the undocumented are terrorists, job stealers, drug pushers, welfare cheats, or some other kind of “evil doer”.

And they scream about it. Loudly. They complain about the dilution of our “culture”. They buy guns and roam around the border threatening to shoot people. They profile and lock away.

They demand that the government do something.

So the government proposes an ID card for Americans which will show work authorization.

What do the right-wingers do?

They http://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2010/03/10/national-id-card-being-considered-by-senators/ out.

Be careful what you wish for.

See: Link

In an article titled “Marathon’s Headline Win Is Empty” CNBC business writer, Darren Rovell, claims that the winner, Meb Keflezighi, a naturalized citizen who was born in Eritrea but has been in the US since he was 12 is a “ringer” so running fans shouldn’t be all that excited that an American won the NY Marathon – since he isn’t really an American.

It’s odd that he considers someone who has lived in the US for 22 years a ringer. Mr. Keflzighi has spent his formative years in the US. Has presumably trained and eaten like an American (not a Kenyan which Mr. Rovell brings up for some reason despite Meb not being Kenyan – guess they’re all the same). So what advantage did Meb have?

Perhaps Mr. Rovell thinks Eritreans are genetically superior runners to Americans.

Though I’d like Mr. Rovell to define “American” if he can.

Furthermore, my guess is that Mr. Rovell is not a Native American. My guess is that his ancestors – perhaps recent ancestors – immigrated to the United States.

One would assume he would not consider them Americans either.

Someone should ask him that too.

The USCIS has recently decided that individuals subject to the “widow penalty” (i.e. US citizen spouse dies before I-130 adjudicated and marriage is less than two years old) will be allowed to have their cases held in abeyance until a remedy is finalized. This means the individuals will be able to secure workcards “EADs” and advance parole documents.

The 9/4/2009 memo with more information can be found here [PDF]

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today announced an updated number of filings for H-1B petitions for the fiscal year 2010 program.

USCIS has received approximately 44,000 H-1B petitions counting toward the Congressionally-mandated 65,000 cap. The agency continues to accept petitions subject to the general cap.

Additionally, the agency has received approximately 20,000 petitions for aliens with advanced degrees; however, we continue to accept advanced degree petitions since experience has shown that not all petitions received are approvable. Congress mandated that the first 20,000 of these types of petitions are exempt from any fiscal year cap on available H-1B visas.

For cases filed for premium processing during the initial five-day filing window, the 15-day premium processing period began April 7. For cases filed for premium processing after the filing window, the premium processing period begins on the date USCIS takes physical possession of the petition.

Via the USCIS