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Today President Trump signed a new Executive Order entitled "Buy American, Hire American." In addition to setting out the administration's preference to have all federal agencies review their policies to maximize purchasing goods, products, and materials produced in the United States, this Executive Order specifically calls for a review of the current H-1B program. The stated purpose is "to create higher wages and employment rates for workers in the United States, and to protect their economic interests." The current H-1B program requires there to be (1) a U.S. employer; (2) a specialty occupation position, which is defined as a job...

USCIS announced today that it received 199,000 H-1B petitions for Fiscal Year 2018. This is less than what was received last fiscal year, i.e., over 230,000. The number of visas available remains the same however. There are 65,000 visa numbers available for general H-1B petitions and 20,000 additional visas for those with advanced U.S. degrees. USCIS reports that it ran a computer-generated random selection process on April 11, 2017. Over the next few weeks, USCIS will be generating receipts for those petitions chosen for processing. Our office has also been monitoring whether USCIS has cashed any of the checks for...

On Monday, April 3, 2017, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS") started receiving H-1B petitions for Fiscal Year 2018 filed by employers on behalf of individuals who have never been in H-1B status, or whose prior employer was a cap-exempt employer, i.e., colleges, universities, and non-profit or government research organizations. There are 65,000 visa numbers available, with an additional 20,000 for those beneficiaries with U.S. advanced degrees. (Please note that 5800 of the 65,000 however are allocated to the H-1B1 program, reserved for citizens of Singapore and Chile.) Yesterday afternoon USCIS announced that the cap has been reached...

USCIS will be accepting H-1B petitions for the 2018 Fiscal Year starting Monday, April 3, 2017 until Friday, April 7, 2017. Assuming they will receive more than visa numbers available (20,000 petitions for individuals with U.S. Master's degrees and 65,000 "regular" petitions), they will be conducting a lottery soon after all of the petitions have been properly received. A special thanks to all of our clients who have worked with us to get their petitions ready to go! Good luck! Stay tuned right here for up to the minute news on FY18 H-1B Processing!

Just hours before President Trump's revised Executive Order (Number 13,780, see Clark Lau LLC post on March 7, 2017), which restricts the entry of certain foreign nationals from certain countries and suspends entry of individuals from the US refugee program for specified periods of time, was to take effect, a federal judge in Hawaii issued a national temporary restraining order which suspends the implementation of the new Executive Order. The judge found that the arguments of those opposing the Executive Order had a "strong likelihood of success" and that "irreparable injury" would occur if the suspension was not granted. Stay tuned for more!

Managing Partner Vince Lau received an email from a friend and colleague Brian Eng in Portland, Maine just a few days after President Trump signed an Executive Order regarding travel restrictions. This ban impacted the daughter of an Iraqi translator; the family was trying to reunite with the daughter. Check out the story that aired on WBUR: http://www.wbur.org/kindworld/2017/03/14/kind-world-35-a-beginning