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Attorney Spotlight: Hiba Anver of EIG

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By Shail Sturm and Ryan Mernin Despite pandemic shocks, business immigration continues to be a strong route for the world's talent to enter the United States. Shail and Ryan caught up with Hiba M. Anver at Erickson Immigration Group to provide clarity on current trends and obstacles facing foreign nationals seeking entry to the United States on the H-1B visa. This entry in our Attorney Spotlight series continues our focus on emerging challenges and changes in the business immigration world. Park Evaluations: What visas do your firm typically handle and what trends have ...

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4 Challenges Unique to PERM Supervised Recruitment

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By Rachel Horner A Supervised Recruitment PERM Audit is issued by the Department of Labor as a final opportunity to satisfy their requirements for PERM Recruitment. If you're receiving a request from the DOL to run a Supervised Recruitment Campaign, you've already completed a standard PERM Campaign that was ultimately rejected. During this much more rigorously scheduled recruitment timeline, a Campaign Officer (CO) will be directing you on which steps you must follow and will either approve or deny your subsequent petition. Here are a few things to remember when it comes to PERM supervised recruitment: The ad text must be approved by the CO prior to its publication

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A Few Takeaways from Park’s PERM Webinar

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By Dillan Wright Recently, our expert evaluator Howard Borenstein, gave a presentation on the recent challenges from USCIS we’ve seen regarding PERM (those who missed it can view it here). We’ve recapped below a few of the ways we can help you meet them with our expert letter services and our proprietary case management system. USCIS Challenges / Expert Letter Answers Recently, Park Evaluations has seen an uptick in certain challenges coming from USCIS. A number of our Expert Opinion Letters allows petitioners to face them head on. For example, a common question we’ll see coming from USCIS is something to the effect of “why does this position require a candidate to have an advanced degree. Couldn’t a candidate with a bachelor’s degree ...

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Fighting Back: Successful Lawsuits Against H-1B Denials

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Hannah Rae Welbourn From banning workers from entering and starting their employment in the United States, to changing decades-old processes right before leaving office, it’s no secret that the prior administration made many attempts to restrict the H-1B process. And even having ushered in a new administration this year, there has still been conflict; in a recent post, we discussed the lawsuit filed by more than 500 H-1B visa applicants against the Department of Homeland Security, one of the latest examples in a pattern of lawsuits over the past few years. Below are some further insights into a few more cases in which difficulty in the H-1B process led to lawsuits. InspectionXpert Corporation v. Cuccinelli An employer seeking to hire ...

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‘Market Research Analyst’ Officially Recognized as Specialty Occupation

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By Dillan Wright Attorneys and H-1B petitioning companies recently managed to gain more ground in the ongoing battle over specialty occupation definitions. Following a series of lawsuits, a settlement was reached in a case against USCIS, and as a result, the role of ‘Market Research Analyst’ must now be recognized as a specialized occupation when considering candidates for an H-1B visa, courts say. Before this ruling, USCIS had been blanketly denying candidates on the basis that the role was not in fact a specialty occupation. The success of this lawsuit is not without precedent. Just last December, USCIS was forced to recognize ‘Computer Programmer’ as a specialized occupation (Ambiguous Language: USCIS Loses Appeal against Tech Company | Park Evaluations) as a ...

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Time is Ticking: Risk of Green Cards Going to Waste

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Hannah Rae Welbourn Around 100,000 green cards, or Permanent Resident Cards, are at risk of going to waste as a result of slower, pandemic-related processing times. This is on top of a preexisting backlog. A closer look at the numbers reveals that roughly 90% of those eligible for these at-risk green cards are currently on employment-based temporary visas, and although they are already living and working in the United States, they continue to face wait times that can last up to decades—a result of the high demand for visas for technology workers from India, combined with the cap placed on the country. But why are ...

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USCIS’s Response to the Afghanistan Conflict

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By Dillan Wright Intro With the withdrawal of US forces and subsequently rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there is a present and obvious need for clarity on the part of USCIS regarding the steps Afghani residents must take in order to take refuge in the United States. We will examine USCIS’s initial response to the crisis and offer a glance at how some organizations have responded in kind. USCIS’s Response USCIS last updated their policies for Afghani refugees on August 26, 2021, shortly after the closure of the US embassy in Kabul. Their site offers a comprehensive breakdown of how to achieve “parole”, including steps on how to apply, directions on waiving application fees, and a list of necessary documentation that must be ...

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F-1 Visa Updates Favor Foreign Students and Eliminate The Need For Extensions

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Rachel Horner    The DHS  officially rescinded a proposed rule from the Trump Administration which aimed to eliminate the duration of status for those on F-1 and J-1 visas (namely international students and journalists).     The duration of status allowed foreign nationals under said visas to enter the country for a set period of time, ranging from a few weeks to years ...

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Second Lottery for 2022 H-1B Applicants Conducted by USCIS

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By: Hannah Welbourn A second round of H-1B seekers has been selected to submit their petitions for the highly sought-after visa. This is the second year in a row that USCIS has conducted a second lottery, releasing a statement Thursday reading: “We recently determined that we needed to select additional registrations to reach the FY 2022 numerical allocations.” Last year’s decision to make another round of selections was largely affected by the initial COVID-19 outbreak, as many who were offered employment early in the year were not able to be hired as a result of the pandemic. The Trump Administration’s travel ban also impacted the decision, as many who had been initially selected were then unable to get into the US. Following ...

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Breaking Down Barriers to Naturalization: The Biden Administration’s Progress

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Hannah Welbourn   With his first year in office officially halfway through, President Joe Biden has made it clear that one of the administration’s biggest goals regarding immigration is to promote naturalization.   Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced a campaign aimed at recruiting new citizens and making the naturalization process more accessible. The campaign is headed by the Biden-appointed Interagency Working Group on Promoting Naturalization (also referred to as the Naturalization Working Group or NWG) and is in accordance with the executive order Biden enacted in February, which included calls to shorten naturalization processing times, reduce the naturalization fee, and reinstate a fee waiver. The executive order also called upon the NGW to develop welcoming and inclusive strategies ...

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