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It’s hard to imagine that USCIS could get any more enforcement oriented than this filing season, being totally preoccupied with fraud.  Computerworld reports that Senator Grassley is asking immigration officials to toughen their demands for evidence from companies hiring visa workers.

His letter to USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas, released Tuesday, also comes just prior to the start of the new fiscal year, Oct. 1 and the release of 66,700 H-1B visas petitions, a number well short of the cap, applied for since April 1, the start of the annual petition process.

In a statement accompanying the release of his letter to Mayorkas, Grassley said, that “Employers need to be held accountable so that foreign workers are not flooding the market, depressing wages, and taking jobs from qualified Americans. Asking the right questions and requesting the necessary documents will go a long way in getting out the fraud in the H-1B program.”  For more on this, please refer to above link and Grassley’s letter to USCIS.

American Apparel, with a vast garment factory in downtown Los Angeles, is firing about 1,800 immigrant employees in the coming days — more than a quarter of its work force — after a federal investigation turned up irregularities in the identity documents the workers presented when they were hired.

The firings at the company, American Apparel, have become a showcase for the Obama administration’s effort to reduce illegal immigration by forcing employers to dismiss unauthorized workers rather than by using workplace raids. The firings, however, have divided opinion in California over the effects of the new approach, especially at a time of high joblessness in the state and with a major, well-regarded employer as a target.

The investigation at American Apparel was started 17 months ago, under President George W. Bush. Obama administration officials point out that they have not followed the Bush pattern of concluding such investigations with a mass roundup of workers. Those raids drew criticism for damaging businesses and dividing immigrant families. For more on this, we link to the NY Times article.

Further to our below blog post, the USCIS today published Q&A on the pending employment-based case inventory.  We link to this for your reference.

The first question that they answer is always what we wonder about, and that is:

Q: Why is the wait so long for my employment-based green card?

A: A visa must be available before a person can obtain an employment-based green card.  Because more people want a green card than there are visas available, not everyone who wants a green card can get one immediately.  Therefore, some people have to wait in line until a visa is available.  The U.S. Department of State (DOS) gives out 140,000 employment-based visas each year.  About 85% of those visas go to people seeking a green card in the United States, while about 15% go to people seeking to immigrate from abroad.  Currently, about 234,000 people have employment-based adjustment of status (green card) applications pending in the United States and are waiting to get a visa.   How long you wait for a visa depends on the supply and demand for your particular preference category, your priority date, and the country your visa will be charged to, usually your country of birth.

Q: What information do I need to have before using the pending Form I-485 inventory reports?

A: You need to know your priority date and your preference category to use the pending Form I-485 inventory reports.  For more information on priority dates and preference categories, see the “Visa Availability & Priority Dates” and “Green Card Eligibility” links to the right.

Q: How do I read the pending I-485 inventory reports?

A: First, click on the link to the report you want to view. Once you click on the link, the report will appear and you will see a series of charts, one for each preference category.  You will see that each chart has different numbers for each month and year.   These numbers show how many green card applicants have priority dates in that month and year.  To figure out how many applicants have earlier priority dates, add all the numbers from all the cells that correspond to earlier months.

USCIS Releases I485 Inventory

On September 23, 2009, remarkably, USCIS for the first time published an inventory of I-485 data online. Applicants can more reliably estimate their expected waiting time for green cards and thus, finally make informed life decisions in career development, family, and becoming new Americans. Congratulations to USCIS, particularly Deputy Chief of Service Center Operations Robert Kruszka and his team, for working with stakeholders including the Legal Immigrant Association in particular and recognizing the importance of making this inventory public.

We link to Q&A and the Inventory Tracker.

After looking at these startling numbers, there is no question that our immigration system needs reform!

House-Senate conferees for the Legislative Branch appropriations bill have agreed to the language for the conference report. The new language also includes a “Continuing Resolution” to fund the government through October 31st (current funding for all federal discretionary programs was set to expire on September 30, 2009). The “CR” also extends E-Verify’s authorization for an additional 31 days according to information on the House Appropriations Committee website.

DHS has released some modifications to the FAR E-Verify enrollment, introducing 2 options to choose from when enrolling for the first time or when updating your profile on the ‘Maintain Company’ page, as follows:

◦ Federal Contractor with E-Verify Clause

◦ Federal Contractor without E-Verify Clause

If you selected the ‘Federal Contractor’ designation when you enrolled or updated before September 8^th, you will notice that your designation has been changed to either Federal Contractor without (if you signed up before 9/8/09 and did not take the refresher tutorial or the Federal Contractor tutorial) or with E-Verify Clause if you enrolled in either refresher tutorial.

If you selected Federal Contractor after September 8^th, you are now designated as a Federal Contractor with E-Verify Clause.

The new director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said today he wants to emphasize public engagement, transparency and information technology modernization of the immigration agency during his term.

To meet those goals, Alejandro Mayorkas said he has created a new Office of Public Engagement and is debuting a new, interactive Web site Sept. 22 that will allow for public feedback on agency policy and proposals. The updated Web site also will allow for greater ease of use and more access to information about pending requests and applications.

USCIS’ involvement with community stakeholders “should be more of a collaborative effort, engaged and interactive,” Mayorkas said. “We want to have the community involved at a level where we can understand what we are doing well — and what we are doing wrong.”

Another high priority is moving forward on implementing the next stages of the USCIS’ information technology transformation project, which will digitize the agency’s paper-based records systems, Mayorkas said. The project was started in 2005 and is expected to cost more than $500 million.

Mayorkas, a Cuban immigrant, was sworn in Aug. 24 to head the nation’s immigration and naturalization systems. He previously served as U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California and was a partner at the O’Melveny and Myers law firm.

Take a look at our very informative Update and review of the regulation and resources for your tool box. If you’re not signed up to receive our poddcasts and NewsFLASHES please do so.

We are always available for consultation.  If you are seeking competent immigration counsel for your compliance matters, contact us

The energy in Washington changes as soon as Congress returns from recess, and this year the air is particularly charged with anticipation of the health care reform debate to come. In the immigration world, we are watching the debate as a barometer of what to expect later in the session when the long-promised Schumer bill is introduced.

The lead Democrat steering an immigration overhaul through the Senate said Wednesday he expects to have a bill ready by Labor Day that is more generous to highly skilled immigrant workers than those who are lower skilled and is tough on future waves of illegal immigration.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sen. Chuck Schumer said an immigration bill can be done by the end of the year or early next year that works out disagreements between labor and business interests on the flow of legal foreign workers.

“I think we’ll have a good bill by Labor Day,” said Schumer, D-N.Y. “I think the fundamental building blocks are in place to do comprehensive immigration reform.”

We link to the Immigration Impact article.