Provide us your name, email address and telephone number. Depending upon the nature of your request, either one of our Case Managers or Attorneys will contact you by email or phone. We will design a fairly-priced immigration quote that works for you, whether it’s providing immigration consulting, working with you on employer compliance issues, handling your healthcare immigration, or any other employment-related services and solutions. Be assured that we will not share your information with others. We adhere to strict client confidentiality.

If you’re a foreign investor looking to live and work in the USA with freedom and flexibility to engage in commercial enterprise anywhere in the USA, the EB-5 investor category can provide an excellent opportunity to accomplish this goal by obtaining permanent residency status (a green-card holder).

There are two EB-5 programs: The EB-5 Alien Entrepreneur Investment Program and the Regional Center Program. If your goal is to have a green-card and not to actively manage a business, it is maybe less expensive to utilize a structured investment program in the Regional Center EB-5 category rather than to start and maintain your own business. On the other hand, if you want to manage your own business, you may want to consider the Alien Entrepreneur Investment by investing $1 Million into your own business that you control, and create the necessary 10 new jobs within a new enterprise. 

Congress created the EB-5 visa in the Immigration Act of 1990 in the hopes of attracting foreign capital to the US and creating jobs for American workers in the process. There are 10,000 visas available in the category each year, one-half of which are reserved for people who participate in the Regional Center Pilot Program option designed for targeted investments in approved regional areas.

The investor is not required to have any prior business experience.  Likewise, the investor is not required to demonstrate any minimum level of education.  The only requirement for the investor is that he/she have the required net worth and capital.

What are some of the benefits of the EB-5 visa program?

• Qualifying investors and their spouse and unmarried minor children (under 21) will be granted US Lawful Permanent Residency

• No minimum requirements as to age, to speak English, employment experience, or education

• Investor and family may live/work anywhere in the United States.  Minor children may obtain employment, subject to age, state and governmental laws and regulations.

• Education benefits including admission to Universities at US resident costs.

• The EB-5 program does not require immigrant investors to manage their investment on a day to day basis.

• After five years, the investor and their family may obtain US citizenship, subject to meeting all immigration requirements, as required under law.

Under USCIS regulations, the investor must demonstrate that their assets are gained in a lawful manner.  This requires the investor to prove their investment funds were obtained through lawful business, salary, investments, property sales, inheritance, gift, loan or other lawful means.

The most common problem area has been insufficient documentation of the source of funds.  Many people try to disclose as little information as possible only to have the file returned with a request for further evidence (RFE). It is better to provide too much information rather than too little information.  USCIS officers require a well-documented source of funds. Professional assistance from experts in the field that specialize in job and location comparative analysis is advisable, as well as assistance from CPA’s, tax attorneys, as well as competent immigration representation throughout the process.

We link to a previous article that we published on this topic by Associate Attorney Brandon Meyer.

Please contact our office directly for more information on the EB-5 program with a free assessment to determine whether you qualify for an investor visa.

The subject is definitely alive and well and not going away!

Hoping to jump-start a major legislative drive on immigration reform in the US congress, more than 100 pro-reform House Democrats signed a letter reminding President Obama of his administration’s commitment to overhaul immigration.

The letter was clearly meant to nudge the WH toward engaging an issue it has allowed to languish.  The letter expressed House Dems “commitment to fix our broken immigration system” and cited “strong support for moving forward on fair and humane comprehensive immigration reform this year.”  One of the signees, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Dem, is gearing up to introduce a major immigration reform bill as early as next month.

Immigration advocates and their allies in Congress believe there is a window for immigration reform to pass early next year, before midterm elections complicate the political calculus.

Immigrant advocates know that once health care reform is settled, immigration will compete with other crucial issues including banking regulations and the interrelated climate and energy questions, for political attention.  As always — immigration reform pivots on one sensitive question:  What happens with the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants? For more on this

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It has been reported that some 20,000 more unannounced employer site visits will be taking place over the next few months by FDNS, but this time it will be to employers who have filed H-1B extensions to determine if there is ongoing compliance by the employer. It’s been asked, do they have the legal right to do this – just show up and demand to speak with a company’s representative or executive officer? Yes, they do, although it hasn’t been acted upon to the extent we are now observing until your $500 Fraud Detection and Prevention government filing fee created the revenue to employ some 6,500 FDNS agents. Up until now, USCIS or DOL agents have always been in a position to do onsite employer interviews when they thought necessary – but it’s been rarely acted upon. Presently, you can add ICE and FDNS to this group – because we’re in a ‘round ‘em up, enforcement climate – and it’s the employers who are being targeted.

What happens during an FDNS site visit? Usually, the officer is making the site visit to verify information in a specific immigration petition filing, and will generally have a copy of the petition. Typically, the officer will ask to speak to an employer representative, such as a human resources manager. The officer may also ask to speak with the foreign national employee of the petition and his or her direct supervisor or manager. He or she may also ask to view the employer’s premises and/or see the foreign national’s work area, and may want to photograph the premises. The officer may also ask for documents like payroll records or pay vouchers for the foreign national, or an organizational chart.

So, how does an employer handle a site visit? We don’t recommend that you wait to ask this question and to get your documentation organized when the agent comes knocking. This is serious business, and they are not just targeting small to medium-size employers.

We highly recommend that you discuss the overall issue of employer site visits with your immigration counsel now. If you don’t have a representative, we are available to walk you through a program that will not only assist you in organizing your Public Access information and files, but we will give you the tools to prepare the company representative that will handle the agent site visit and to prepare them for the questions that will be asked, what documentation should be organized now so that it’s easily accessible to the agent when requested – and overall, how to successfully respond to a government site visit at your place of employment.

We’ve had several blog posts on the reverse brain drain issue.  This is a very interesting post that we found on TechCrunch by Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic who is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University.  The writer expresses concerns as to what is occurring in the IT sector today and why the brightest and the best are deciding not to put down roots in the USA.

Vivek spent Columbus Day in Silicon Valley meeting a roomful of new Indian arrivals to the USA. The event was organized by Think India Foundation, a think tank that seeks to solve problems that Indians face.

When introducing the topic of skilled immigration, the discussion moderator, Sand Hill Group founder M.R. Rangaswami asked the obvious question. How many planned to return to India?  He was shocked to see more than three-quarters of the audience raise their hands.  One has to ask why would such talented people voluntarily leave Silicon Valley, a place that remains the hottest hotbed of technology innovation on earth, or to leave other promising locales such as New York City, Boston and the Research Triangle area of North Carolina?

What they learned was that the average age of the Indian returnees was 30 and the Chinese was 33. They were really well educated: 51% of the Chinese held master’s degrees and 41% had PhDs. Among Indians, 66% held a master’s and 12% had PhDs. These degrees were mostly in management, technology, and science. Clearly these returnees are in the U.S. population’s educational top tier—precisely the kind of people who can make the greatest contribution to an economy’s innovation and growth. And it isn’t just new immigrants who are returning home, we learned. Some 27% of the Indians and 34% of the Chinese had permanent resident status or were U.S. citizens. That’s right—it’s not just about green cards.

We link to a letter co-authored by the Semiconductor Industry of America (SIA) and the Industry of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) to the Congressional Subcommittee on Immigration.  The letter calls for sensible immigration reform - reforming quotas to match industry needs - reducing the ever-growing visa wait times for green-cards for skilled worker.

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[IMMIGRANT'S LIST reports]  Last week, Congressman Lamar Smith from Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote an Op-Ed in Politico that should make everyone working for immigration reform take notice. Rather than lay out a plan to address the unsustainable immigration system in this country, he uses the words “amnesty,” “illegal-immigrant lobby” and “open-borders crowd” (24 times by our count) to scare readers.

We’ve included the text of the article from Politico.com.  When you read it, do what I did — ask yourself: “Okay, what’s your plan? How do we fix our broken system?”

We concur with immigrant’s List, “Governing means being responsible. But too many elected officials think screaming “AMNESTY” over and over passes for honest debate. They’re loud and they’re going to use every scare tactic in the book to get re-elected. Don’t let them get away with it. With your help, Immigrants’ List will work to elect members of Congress in 2010 who actually want to tackle the problems we face, and who actually want to govern.”

…What do you think?  

The new wallet-size U.S. Passport Card is a travel document that can be used to enter the United States from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda at land border crossings or sea ports-of-entry. Note that it cannot be used for international air travel. The passport card is more convenient and less expensive than a passport book.

US citizens, whether or not they have a passport book, may apply for a passport card. Note that passport cards cannot be shipped using overnight delivery. All passport cards will be returned using First Class Mail.

If you currently have or previously had a U.S. passport book, you might be able to apply for a passport card by mail. Note that in this scenario you will use a passport renewal form (DS-82) even if you're applying for your first passport card.

If you have never had a passport book, or you do not meet the requirements to apply by mail using Form DS-82, you may apply for a passport card in person using Form DS-11. Read more information.

 

-What to do if your California NCLEX Pass Letter (aka Candidate Report) is due to Expire

If the expiration date is drawing near on your California NCLEX Pass Letter, we have been advised that the following has been very helpful in many instances resulting in 1-year extensions. The CA State Board of Registered Nursing Licensing Program responds via email and notifies you that your file has been extended for a year and will indicate the new expiration date. They will further indicate that there will be no other correspondence concerning this and that it is important for you to keep the email as evidence of your extension. We thank Adevia Health, for sharing this information with us.

Send your email to: brn_licensing@dca.ca.gov
Prepare a formal letter in the body of the email as follows:

Address:
Board of Registered Nursing
P.O. Box 944210
Sacramento, CA 95834-2100
U.S.A.

To whom it may concern:
I passed my NCLEX-RN exam on [enter date].  My file number is [enter file number].  I live in the [enter the country where you live], and have accepted an offer of employment to work [indicate the name of the hospital and reference the city, CA]  My immigration case is delayed due to retrogression issues. The pass letter that I received from your office says that I must provide a Social Security number to the board of nursing by [enter the date].  I cannot provide a Social Security Number at this time because I've never lived or worked in the US, and I would be grateful indeed if you grant me an extension of another year.

Your help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,
Your name
Address
Telephone number
Email address
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- Nursing Across State Lines – License to go
[Reported in NurseZone.com]
Many nurses received their first license at an early age, when, after a few months of practicum, realized that they could pass the written exam, a skills test and the physical requirements.  Our home state gives us a license to drive, not just in our own state – but also across state lines. Nurse licensing should work the same way, according to those who would like to expand the multi-state Nurse Licensure Compact.

Not only would it make life easier for nurses, but it would clarify inter-state laws and ensure patient safety, according to the country’s leading ambulatory care nursing organization.

Lilly Correa, BSN, BCRN, graduated in 2006 from a San Antonio school of nursing and received her first license from Texas, which is a compact state. That means a seamless, no-cost transition when she wants to work in another compact state, which she is currently doing as a travel nurse with American Mobile Healthcare.

“Having compact licensure makes it so easy to go to different states,” said the PICU specialist who is working at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.  Some states resisting the compact may have boards of nursing that depend heavily on the income that license applications bring, while other states fear a loss of control of the nurses practicing within their borders. For more, we link to this article

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- Foreign Nurse Manual from NCSBN (National Nursing Board)

The NCSBN has an excellent Resource Manual available for International Nurses and was developed as a user-friendly resource. The manual focuses on 3 main topics related to foreign nurses:  Education, English Exam and Immigration.  Very intelligently, each chapter has 4 sections:  Definitions, Issues, FAQs and Resources.

It is important to understand that each state is responsible for the licensure of nurses within the state. Variations exist among the states.  It is very important to be working with a knowledgeable certification and licensure specialist or be in direct contact yourself with the State Board. Immigration Compliance Group are specialists in health care immigration - for all occupations.  We have placed hundreds of foreign health care personnel with US hospitals and top medical facilities in the USA.  We have worked with some of the most reputable international staffing professionals in the industry; have attended countless recruitment events abroad and in the USA, and interface one-on-one with the health care professional and their families throughout the entire process.  We continue to advise and consult with some of the top recruiters and medical facilities in the USA.

Contact Immigration Compliance Group for all of your US and Canadian health care immigration matters.  Here is the link to the NCSBN Manual and here is a link to our healthcare brochure.
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