Siskind Susser is excited to announce that Lynn Susser was recently elected to ABIL, the Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers. ABIL is comprised of over 20 lawyers from top tier immigration practices with years of expertise and a comprehensive understanding of immigration law. For more information on ABIL, including a map of ABIL attorneys worldwide, visit their website at www.abil.com.
The following articles are excerpts from ABIL’s monthly Immigration Insider, available here on their website.

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USCIS Publishes Long-Awaited Final Rule on Certain Employment-Based Visa Programs

In an effort to provide increased flexibility to highly skilled foreign professionals, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a final rule which takes effect on January 17, 2017. Though USCIS has effectively enacted these clarifications over the previous 15 years through a succession of non-binding policy memoranda, this provides definitive rules in these areas.

USCIS stated that the final rule was produced with the intentions of modernizing and improving numerous aspects of specific employment-based nonimmigrant and immigrant visa programs.

Among other effects, the final rule aims to better facilitate the employment and retention of high skilled workers who are beneficiaries of approved employment-based immigrant visa petitions for U.S. employers by allowing upward mobility for employees within companies, empowering employees change employers, and encouraging employees to pursue other avenues of employment.

The final rule is also intended to:

• Clarify and improve longstanding policies and practices implementing sections of the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act and the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act related to certain foreign workers, which USCIS said will enhance consistency in adjudication.
• Improve job portability for certain beneficiaries of approved Form I-140 petitions by maintaining a petition’s validity under certain circumstances despite an employer’s withdrawal of the approved petition or the termination of the employer’s business.
• Clarify and expand when individuals may keep their priority dates when applying for adjustment of status to lawful permanent residence.
• Allow certain high-skilled individuals in the United States with E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, or O-1 nonimmigrant status, including any applicable grace period, to apply for employment authorization for a limited period if:
• They are the principal beneficiaries of an approved I-140 petition,
• An immigrant visa is not authorized for issuance for their priority date, and
• They can demonstrate that compelling circumstances exist that justify the agency’s issuing an employment authorization document in its discretion.
• Such employment authorization may only be renewed in limited circumstances and only in one-year increments.

 

• Clarify various policies and procedures related to the adjudication of H-1B petitions, including, among other things, providing H-1B status beyond the six-year authorized period of admission, determining cap exemptions and counting workers under the H-1B cap, H-1B portability, licensure requirements, and protections for whistleblowers.
• Establish two grace periods of up to 10 days for individuals in the E-1, E-2, E-3, L-1, and TN nonimmigrant classifications to provide a reasonable amount of time for these individuals to prepare to begin employment in the country and to depart the United States or take other actions to extend, change, or otherwise maintain lawful status.
• Establish a grace period of up to 60 consecutive days during each authorized validity period for certain high-skilled nonimmigrant workers when their employment ends before the end of their authorized validity period, so they may more readily pursue new employment and an extension of their nonimmigrant status.
• Automatically extend the employment authorization and validity of Employment Authorization Documents (EADs or Forms I-766) for certain individuals who apply on time to renew their EADs.
• Eliminate the regulatory provision that requires USCIS to adjudicate the Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, within 90 days of filing and that authorizes interim EADs in cases where such adjudications are not conducted within the 90-day time frame.

USCIS received nearly 28,000 comments on the proposed rule from a broad range of entities and individuals.

View the USCIS announcement or the final rule

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USCIS Revises I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification Form

 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) revised and published Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. While employers can continue to use the version dated 03/08/2013, they must begin exclusively using the version dated 11/14/2016 by January 22, 2016. Changes made in order to reduce errors in the new version include a prompt for “other last names used” instead of “other names used” in Section 1, as well as the addition of prompts to ensure information is entered correctly. USCIS also stated that the new forms should be easier to complete on a computer, with changes such as drop down lists and calendars for filling in dates, on-screen instructions for each field, and a clear all fields option for a quick start over.

 

View the USCIS announcement or access form I-9

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This newsletter was prepared with the assistance of ABIL, the Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers (www.abil.com), of which Lynn Susser is an active member.

 

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