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Published by the Law Offices of Carl Shusterman, 600 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1550, Los Angeles, California, 90017. Phone: (213)623-4592, Fax: (213) 623-3720, E-Mail: carl@shusterman.com, WWW Home Page: http://www.shusterman.com
To subscribe to SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE, fill out the brief online form at http://www.shusterman.com/subscribe.html#subscribe or send an e-mail message to majordomo@ls.shusterman.com, with the words "subscribe visalaw" in the body of the message.
To unsubscribe, fill in your e-mail address at http://www.shusterman.com/subscribe.html#unsubscribe or send an e-mail message to majordomo@ls.shusterman.com, with the words "unsubscribe visalaw" in the body of the message.
For back issues of SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE, see
Disclaimer: This newsletter is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship. All information contained in this newsletter is generalized. Any reliance on information contained herein is taken at your own risk.
1. November 2000 State Department Visa Bulletin
2. Latest INS/State Dept/Labor Dept Processing Times
3. H-1B Cap Legislation: Good For Employers And For Immigrants
4. Immigrant Visas At Ciudad Juarez And Other U.S. Consulates
5. Immigration Trivia Quiz: Jazz Is As American As...
6. Web Site: EOIR's Virtual Law Library Debuts
7. INS Web Manager Re: Downloadable INS Forms & Fillable Forms
8. AILF And INS Reach Settlement In Healthcare Worker Litigation
9. Chat Schedule, Online Transcripts & LegalElite
10. Answers To September's Immigration Trivia Quiz
Topic #7 was written by Gregg Beyer, the INS Web Manager.
Topic #8 was written by Traci Hong, Staff Attorney for the American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF). AILF is a foundation which was established to promote public understanding of immigration law and policy through education, policy analysis and support to litigators. For more information about AILF, see http://www.ailf.org
and scroll down to "Selected INS Administrative Decisions".
For the Family categories, the movement of priority dates was slow, but contained no regressions. Worldwide numbers advanced between four and five weeks. India 4th (brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens) advanced two weeks. The movement of Mexican and Philippine numbers range from no advance (for Mexican 2A and Philippine 3rd and 4th) up to four months for Mexican 3rd.
On the Employment side of the ledger, all worldwide numbers, with the exception of unskilled workers, remained current. Major disappointments included the lack of any forward movement whatsoever in the Indian EB-2 category. The Indian EB-3 advanced only one week. China EB-2 and EB-3 numbers also failed to advance, and the State Department predicted that Philippine EB-3 would backlog in December. However, we predict that within six to twelve months after the H-1B cap bill is signed into law, the backlogs in the EB-2 and EB-3 categories will disappear (for a year or two).
The priority date for unskilled workers advanced three months to February 1, 1996.
The November Visa Numbers can be found at
For an explanation of what the categories, dates and symbols listed below mean, see
and
Check the State Department's official version to see complete information about the movement of family, employment and lottery numbers, at
Our web site contains the waiting times of each center and enumerates each state served by the center and any foreign offices within the center's jurisdiction.
The service centers periodically issue lists of their processing times for various types of applications. Our web site contains the latest list issued by each service center.
Warning: Processing times may appear faster on the official lists than they are in reality.
To see how fast (or slow) your service center is processing a particular type of petition or application, see
Processing times at INS District Offices may be accessed at
See
to check the latest processing times of your Department of Labor Regional Office and your State Employment Service Agency.
We list selected Consular Post Processing Times at
If this was a major victory for the IT industry, it was an even greater victory for H-1B workers. Congress made it easier than ever before for H-1B workers and for applicants for adjustment of status to change employers. The "indentured servitude" argument that critics of immigration, in general, and of the H-1B program, in particular, had used to try to defeat the bill has been eliminated from the program.
Much of the credit goes to H-1B workers who so effectively organized and added a number of important amendments to the final bill. I will be forever proud to have received the following e-mail message soon after the passage of S.2045:
Hi Carl,I want to thank you for your very valuable guidance and support for ISN's cause. Without your valuable advice, ISN could not have articulated issues faced by H-1B visa workers. I count on your continued support. Do let me know if we can be of any help.
Thank you,
United We can make a Difference.
Shailesh Gala,
President
Immigrants Support Network
In addition, Senator Feinstein's "Immigration Services and Infrastructure Improvement Act" was added to S.2045 shortly before the October 3 vote. This bill provides for congressional oversight to substantially reduce INS backlogs. I am happy to have helped organize a group of AILA attorneys last March, just prior to the bill's introduction to meet with Senator Feinstein in her office in Washington DC to lend our support to the bill which was then in the proposal stage. See
I am also delighted to have received the following e-mail message from Senator Feinstein's Legislative Counsel a few hours after S.2045 was passed by the Senate:
I am pleased to inform you that the Senate has passed the INS Backlog Reduction legislation as an amendment to the H-1B legislation.Our next challenge is getting it through the House. The Senator also intends to request additional appropriations funding to be included in the CJS conference report.
On behalf of Senator Feinstein, I thank you for your hard work in getting this bill drafted and generating congressional support for the measure. I look forward to working with you in gaining the bill's final passage.
Best regards,
LaVita
=====
LaVita Strickland
Counsel
Office of Senator Dianne Feinstein
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(Both Shailesh's and LaVita's letters were very generous in describing my contributions in generating support for both S.2045 and the backlog reduction amendments. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to play a part in helping to promote these welcome changes to the immigration laws.)
S.2045 not only raises the H-1B cap to 195,000 for each of the next three years, it exempts substantial numbers of H-1B workers (including certain physicians) from the cap, it permits extensions of the six-year limitation for certain H-1B workers, it partially eliminates the per-country limitations and permits H-1B workers to transfer jobs when their petitions are submitted (not when they are approved). Importantly, if the INS fails to adjust the status of an H-1B worker within 180 days, the worker is free to change employers as long as he or she remains in the same occupation. And, of course, the backlog reduction amendments will benefit all potential immigrants, H-1B workers and persons in other nonimmigrant categories.
The complete text of S.2045 may be found at
A FAQ on the bill is online at
A detailed section-by-section analysis of the bill is available at
A summary of the bill may be found at
Even the White House was taken aback by the quick passage of S.2045. A second bill, H.R.5362, was introduced to raise the employer's fee for submission of an H-1B petition from $500 to $1,000. Proceeds from this fee are earmarked primarily to train and educate U.S. workers.
Thanks to everyone who participated in our October 9 chat entitled: "The New H-1B Cap And More!" A transcript of the chat will be online soon.
Those who missed our chat may wish to participate in our LegalElite online discussion in November. (See Topic #9 below.)
To sum up the cable, applicants who have submitted form I-824 to move their applications abroad have often found that the processing times for I-824s rivals those for adjustment of status.
Other applicants have approached posts with "attorney-certified" I-140s. However, some posts have been unwilling to accept such applications.
Fortunately, the INS has begun shifting its priorities from naturalization to applications for adjustment of status. The cable predicts that "most IV posts are likely to experience...a significant drop in workload over an extended period of time."
Based on the above observations, the Visa Office has concluded that IV posts abroad "should work to eliminate the backlog in I-140 cases for which beneficiaries have filed an I-824 request for overseas processing."
The Visa Office estimated that the total amount of such applications is less than 2,000, and that the impact on the posts in taking on this caseload would be minimal. Most overseas posts have indicated a willingness to process these cases.
The cable request overseas posts to accept "non-discretionary" cases (where the applicant has applied to have his IV interview in a post in his own country) where the applicant can supply the post with the following items: (1) Original I-797 notice of approval of the I-140 petition; (2) Copy of the I-140 petition (a certified copy is not necessary); (3) Receipt for the I-824 to demonstrate the applicant has requested overseas processing; and (4) Evidence the applicant was last resident in the host country of the post.
If the applicant was not last resident in a particular consular district, the post may accept the case on a discretionary basis. The Visa Office encourages "posts to accept these cases for applicants who are homeless (Shusterman's note: Not literally homeless, but no IV-issuing post exists in the country of the applicant's last residence - e.g., Iran) or facing hardship as a result of long processing delays."
If a post is unable to assume extra cases, the Visa Office will designate another post to assume the case.
One nearby post, the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico announced its willingness to accept "discretionary" cases from applicants with pending I-485s who had filed I-824s to have their cases processed at ANY overseas post. If you wish to request that your IV interview be conducted in Juarez, you should send all of the documents specified in the cable plus OF-230, OF-169 and all supporting documents directly to the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Attention: Chief of the Immigrant Section.
A practice pointer: Travel abroad for your interview only on a valid H or L (or other "dual intent") nonimmigrant visa or on advance parole. If you fail to take this precaution, and there is a problem with your IV application, you will not be able to re-enter the U.S. until the problem is resolved.
By the beginning of the 21st Century, jazz had become a worldwide phenomenon. Many jazz instrumentalists and vocalists have immigrated to America - the birthplace of jazz. See
and be the first to name the three pictured jazz artists (first and last names), identify which ones are immigrants (include their country of birth) and, for good measure, include the phone number of the sponsor of this month's newsletter (Mimeo.com's phone number, not mine!). Mail your answers to me at
The prize is a free legal consultation (Value - $300) before the end of October 2000.
and scroll down to "EOIR's Virtual Law Library and Immigration Resource Center".
The EOIR is important to both immigrants and their employers since, among its components, are the Immigration Courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO). The courts and the BIA primarily hear removal, deportation and exclusion cases. OCAHO is responsible for hearing employer sanctions, antidiscrimination and document abuse cases.
We reviewed the EOIR web site in the March 2000 issue of SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE. See
While we lavished praise on the new "BIA Practice Manual and Questions and Answers", we were critical of (1) the complete lack of downloadable BIA forms on the web site; (2) the lack of individual court listings and other information; and (3) the fact that the site contain no precedent BIA decisions prior to October 1986.
On June 1, 2000, a new EOIR website came online and alleviated some of these problems, adding downloadable forms, some court listings (with a promise of more to come) and promising a "soon to come" Virtual Law Library". See our June 2000 review at
What does the Virtual Law Library offer that did not previously appear on the EOIR site?
For one thing, the BIA Decisions which formerly included only those from October 1996 to the present now consist of all precedent decisions from 1976 to the present, an additional 700+ decisions. Hopefully, the webmasters are working their way back to decision #1 in 1940, just more 2525 decisions to scan ;-) The decisions contain a summary which is a nice feature.
Particularly helpful is the 76-page "Cumulative Index To Board Precedent Decisions" (from #2526 to #3434) with an alphabetical submit matter index beginning with "Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Residence" and ending with "Withholding of Deportation". For decisions prior to 1976, the web site refers the reader to the books, specifically the index at the back of Volume 15 of the "Administrative Decisions Under Immigration and Nationality Laws of the United States". This is fine for immigration attorneys and those with easy access to a good law library, but not very comforting to the general public.
The OCAHO decisions have always been more organized, perhaps because OCAHO is a newer agency and there are less decisions. The OCAHO decisions actually begin at the beginning, in 1988, and are divided into seven bound volume, and an eighth looseleaf volume.
All BIA and OCAHO decisions are in PDF format, and the scanners being less than perfect, make many of the decisions difficult to read.
The Virtual Law Library contains the following sections:
The "Comments and Suggestions" link did not work when I tried it ;-) However, EOIR invites you to use their Virtual Law Library and to send your comments and suggestions to
and if you wish, cc: carl.shusterman@gte.net
Dear Carl,
This is sent to you hoping that you will provide some sort of alert to your readers of slight changes being made to the INS Internet Forms home page and to some of the INS forms and Instructions published therein.
INS Forms and Fees on the Internet:
As you know, the revamped INS Website -- INS Online -- went online August 12, 1999. Since then, the number of visitors has doubled -- to over one million for each of the months of August and September 2000. The most popular feature of this revamped Website is INS downloadable forms. We are delighted by this: we want INS Online to become the "gold standard" of INS public information and forms -- a place where people can go and expect that the information we provide and the form(s) they download are the latest and most accurate that we have. I think we all agree that no customer or their attorney should have to go to an INS field office for basic immigration information or only to pick up an INS form. We want people to go first to the INS Website.
The popularity of our Forms Online feature carries with it several responsibilities for INS:
To address the above responsibilities, we have done the following. These changes are reflected on the INS Forms and Fees pages and on the forms/Instructions for those forms with new edition dates:
A case in point is the FEP for the I-131 (see URL below).
Examples of important clarifying information on FEPs:
I-129 at http://uscis.gov/graphics/formsfee/forms/I-129.htm
I-131 at http://uscis.gov/graphics/formsfee/forms/I-131.htm
I-485 at http://uscis.gov/graphics/formsfee/forms/I-485.htm
N-400 at http://uscis.gov/graphics/formsfee/forms/n-400.htm
Also, please note that we have published a new version of the AR-11 Change of Address card at:
NOTE: Many non-INS Websites make INS forms available to the public -- and some even charge for this service. Most of those Websites republish our forms on their own Websites. HOWEVER, this may deprive users of these non-INS Website forms of access to the latest version of the form/Instruction and/or to the important information we have placed on the FEPs. In turn, this may result in incomplete or inaccurately filed forms -- and in delays that impact both customers (having to refile) and INS staff (having to review and then return an incomplete or wrongly filed application).
OUR RECOMMENDATION: Websites should link their INS Forms home pages directly to our Forms, Fees and Filing Locations feature and our Chart. [At a minimum, if you provide links to our forms, you should link to the FEPs and not to the forms themselves.]
These can be found as below.
Forms and Fees write-up, including important information about INS forms and fees and edition, including the difference between a "Y" and an "N" behind an edition date, etc., can be found at:
The Forms and Fees Chart can be found at:
NOTE: The date of the most recent edition of each INS public use form has been added to the Forms, Fees and Filing Locations Chart, and recorded on the relevant FEPs. In most cases, these newer editions are "Y" editions, meaning the previous editions are also still acceptable. Acceptable versions, in addition to the latest editions, are also noted on the Chart and the relevant FEPs.
We feel it is important to alert your constituents to these important and exciting changes to INS forms and to the clarifying information being added to FEPS about many of these forms.
Feedback to INS:
I would also like inform your readers to a coming enhancement of the INS Internet Feedback system: customers will be able to email their comments and concerns to us. NOTE: For the time being, this will be a one way communication and we will not be able to reply to any questions -- but we will read each email and we do make changes or corrections to the Website when we hear of them.
NOTE: People should not use this email system to ask questions about their specific cases nor send information about their cases over the Internet. A warning to this effect will be on the front of the Feedback page. Case specific questions and requests for case status information must still be routed to the National Customer Service Center (NCSC) telephone or the usual communications channels of writing, telephoning or visiting an INS field office. The new email Feedback feature will have the same URL as the current snail-mail Feedback page at:
Gregg Beyer
INS Web Manager
Immigration and Naturalization Service
425 I St., NW, Suite 4034
Washington, DC 20536
On September 29, 2000, the American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) entered into an agreement with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to settle Abraham v. Reno, the lawsuit filed to compel INS to issue regulations implementing §343 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) for certain healthcare workers. Under the settlement agreement, the INS will be required to do the following:
Our most recent chats were
From November 27 to December 4, we will conduct two simultaneous LegalElite discussions:
One discussion, on the New H-1B Cap Bill, will be of interest to employers and workers alike.
The other, entitled "10 Commandments For Marketing Your Law Firm Online", to be conducted together with Margaret Watkins of Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps, will be directed primarily to attorneys. For more information, see
Most subscribers said only Lenny Krayzelberg, the swimmer who won three gold medals. However, one said 25 and provided me with their names. Let's give him the bronze medal. Another gave me 26 names, and even provided me with the names of the foreign-born coaches. Let's give him the silver medal.
However, for the first time (and probably, the last time) in the history of the Immigration Trivia Quiz, the gold medal goes to the immigration lawyer in Los Angeles who writes this newsletter.
Here's what he found by going to the official U.S. Olympic Web Site at
and clicking on "Share The Dream" and then on "Meet USA Team 2000", and clicking on each sport and each team member's bio:
The winner plans to forego his prize and distribute it in gift certificates to everyone who retains his law firm during the month of December 2000 :-)
Carl Shusterman
October 10, 2000