PERM can be one of the most confusing and frustrating portions of the employment-based Green Card process for employers. PERM is driven by numerous regulatory requirements and the slightest mistake can doom a Green Card sponsorship. As Part One of Burr and Forman, LLP’s Summer Green Card Series, we look at the PERM process so employers can understand what to expect and how to successfully prepare applications.
What is PERM?
PERM stands for Program Electronic Review Management and is the web-based program operated by the Department of Labor (“DOL”) for obtaining Labor ...
he United States Supreme Court recently stayed portions of two (2) U.S. Circuit Court opinions and allowed parts of President Trump's travel ban to go into effect. Foreign nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen may be affected by the Supreme Court's order.
The Supreme Court's order relates to the second of two (2) Executive Orders ("EO"), both of which banned nonimmigrants from several predominately Muslim countries from entering the United States for ninety (90) days. The first EO was blocked by federal courts, and the President decided to rewrite the ...
Each year, thousands of employers file H-1B visa petitions for foreign nationals seeking to obtain temporary work authorization in professional jobs which requires at least a Bachelors' Degree in a specific field. On April 7, 2017, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it reached the congressionally mandated cap for H-1B visas for the 2018 fiscal year and would institute a lottery to select petitions for adjudication. The number of H-1B petitions filed in 2017 declined for the first time since 2013, but the number of filings were still more than double the number of ...
Advocates, employers, and employees are in a state of suspense in anticipation of potential changes to the H-1B program. The H-1B visa allows foreign workers to be employed in certain "specialty occupations," which are generally defined as positions requiring, at a minimum, a U.S. Bachelor's degree (or the foreign equivalent) in a specific academic field. Congress has established a limit of 65,000 H-1B visas per fiscal year, with an additional 20,000 H-1B visas reserved for candidates with U.S. advanced degrees (such as a Master's degree or higher). This does not include H-1B ...
One of the biggest drawbacks for employers trying to utilize the H-1B visa program is the numerical cap. The current law limits the number of H-1B visas available to 65,000 annually with an additional 20,000 available to those with a U.S. Master's Degree. USCIS regularly receives more than triple the cap number in H-1B petitions each year, resulting in the implementation of a random lottery system to determine who receives a visa. Despite the odds, the H-1B continues to be the visa classification of choice for many employers due to the advantages it provides for foreign national ...
There have been significant updates to the I-9 Form that was proposed last year. This article summarizes the new updates to the I-9 Form, M-274 Handbook and ICE Audit Update.
New I-9 Form
On March 8, 2013, the Department of Homeland Security, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published the long-awaited, revised Form I-9. USCIS initially proposed the new form in March 2012 and has spent the past several months reviewing thousands of comments about the proposed changes. The key changes on the new form include expanding the form from one to two pages; a slightly ...