The Star Tribune publishes Attorney Sam Myer and Sarah Peterson’s Counterpoint explaining how the H-1B Program already contains significant employer-paid fees to train US workers. The H-1B program also contains significant US worker protections. The piece urges us to be informed on the parameters of the existing program so that we can have informed conversations on important improvements, […]
On April 18th, 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order (“EO”) titled, “Buy American And Hire American.” President Trump states that the intent of this EO is to “create higher wages and employment rates for workers in the United States, and to protect their economic interests.” While this is, and should always be, the foundation […]
On April 17th, 2017, USCIS announced that it ran the FY 2018 H-1B cap lottery. USCIS confirmed that it received only 199,000 H-1B cap petitions for the 85,000 available slots. This figure is a substantial decrease from FY 2017 when USCIS received 236,000 Petitions. USCIS also reiterated that it is still implementing a ban on […]
Today Senators Klobuchar, Collins, Heitkamp urged U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) to Continue Premium Processing for Doctors Participating in the Conrad 30 Program. These Senators have championed the fight for strong immigration policies for International Medical Graduates (“IMGT”) and we are thrilled to see their leadership on this issue.
On Friday, March 3, USCIS announced […]
USCIS just announced that it is suspending the premium processing option for all H-1B Petitions, starting April 3, 2017. This includes all FY18 H-1B Cap cases and all H-1B cases that are cap exempt.
SPS Immigration urges employers who know of H-1B transfer cases or H-1B extension cases to file prior to March 30, 2017 to […]
On November 18, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security issued final regulations that will change a number of provisions relating to high-skilled immigration. The new rules become effective January 17, 2017. The regulations offer several positive improvements, and they also codify many of the policy positions and interpretations that USCIS has developed over the […]
On Tuesday, May 2, 2016, USCIS announced that it has completed data entry of all FY2017 H-1B cap-subject petitions selected in its computer-generated random process. USCIS will now begin to return H-1B cap-subject petitions that were not selected. USCIS is not providing a definite time frame for returning H-1B Petitions that were not selected in the lottery but […]
USCIS announced that it received over 236,000 H-1B Cap Petitions which exceeds the statutory H-1B cap for fiscal year (FY) 2017. This is 3,000 more H-1B Cap Petitions than USCIS received last year.
On April 9th, USCIS conducted a computer-generated lottery and has started sending out receipt notices for cases filed under premium processing. USCIS […]
On Thursday, April 7th, 2016 USCIS announced that the FY 2017 H-1B numerical cap was reached for both the U.S. advanced degree program and the general H-1B lottery. We expect that USCIS will run the lottery this coming week and shortly thereafter notify the public on the number of actual H-1B Petitions received.
USCIS will […]
DHS today published in the Federal Register a proposed regulation that would make changes to existing rules relating to highly skilled nonimmigrant workers. The proposed changes are intended to improve and streamline the immigration process for certain workers, and the proposal contains a number of key improvements. The proposal contains a number of […]
