Today, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) announced that it will begin accepting premium processing requests on form I-907 for I-129 petitions for E-3 classification on February 24, 2021. This is the first time that premium processing has been expanded to E-3 petitioners. As of the writing of this post, the USCIS fee…
By Roujin Mozaffarimehr Today, President Biden reversed one of the immigration bans of 2020 by former President Trump. This ban was premised on claims that immigrants harm the U.S. economy – a premise wholeheartedly rejected by most economists. Today’s proclamation ends the ban on issuance of certain immigrant visas abroad as set forth by Proclamation…
By Roujin Mozaffarimehr On February 3, 2021, USCIS issued a new Policy Memorandum[1] that rescinds the Trump-era Computer Programmer Policy Memorandum.[2] This 2021 Policy Memorandum was issued in direct response to the decision issued in the Ninth Circuit in Innova Solutions v. Baran. By way of background, in December 2000, the Director of the USCIS…
by Roujin Mozaffarimehr On January 25, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order[1] which effectively revoked President Trump’s Buy American and Hire American Executive Order (commonly known as “BAHA”).[2] On April 18, 2017, President Trump signed the Buy American and Hire American Executive order, which was used as the basis for many restrictive immigration policies…
By Roujin Mozaffarimehr, Partner. On his first day in office, President Biden signed seventeen (17) executive orders and proclamations, one of which included the revocation of the Muslim and African Travel Bans. These bans were put into place in 2017 by the Trump Administration and restricted the immigrant and non-immigrant entry of foreign nationals from…
By Roujin Mozaffarimehr This week, two District Courts set aside the Interim Final Rule, Strengthening Wage Protections for the Temporary and Permanent Employment of Certain Aliens in the United States, 85 FR 63872 (Oct. 8, 2020), of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Chamber of…
by Roujin Mozaffarimehr On October 7, 2020, the Department of Labor published an interim final rule (IFR) (85 FR 63918) that dramatically changes the calculation methodology of the prevailing wage for OES-based wage levels for all occupations. This new rule took effect immediately on October 8, 2020 and impacts wage rates for H-1Bs, H-1B1s, and…
By Roujin Mozaffarimehr On Friday July 31st, The Department of Labor (DOL) announced that it entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The MOA will allow the two departments to share immigrant and nonimmigrant petition records and data. This includes data within the Office of Foreign…
By Roujin Mozaffarimehr As we reported back in June, on June 22, 2020, President Donald Trump signed a Presidential Proclamation suspending the entry of H-1B and H-2B visas and accompanying dependents, certain J visas, and L visas and accompanying dependents, and extending the April 2020 suspension on certain immigrants. banning visa issuance through December 31, 2020. The…
By Roujin Mozaffarimehr On Wednesday August 12th, The United State Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued an order limiting the scope of the nationwide injunction on the Public Charge rule that took effect earlier this year. Last month, we reported that the United States District Court, Southern District of New York issued two…