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Clark Lau LLC Managing Partner Vincent Lau and Senior Counsel Steven Clark continue to be on the roster of Who's Who Legal Corporate Immigration Thank you for all your support! We remain dedicated to providing you with quality and responsive immigration solutions, for individuals and for employers.

On March 6, 2017, President issued a new Executive Order entitled "Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States," which essentially revoked his previous Executive Order 13769 issued on January 27, 2017. This new Executive Order seeks to address the concerns raised by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals while continue to limit the entry of certain nationals into the United States. The new Executive Order becomes effective on March 16, 2017. The most notable provisions in the new Executive Order are the following: Nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian, and Yemen will not be allowed...

USCIS just announced hours ago that it will not honor any requests for premium processing of any H-1B petitions received on or after April 3, 2017. The suspension is reported to be "up to six months" and USCIS will notify the public when this suspension is lifted. USCIS reports that this suspension is to allow for the processing of backlogged H-1B cases. What does this mean? • Premium processing is the option for a petitioner to request that USCIS provide a response to its H-1B petition within 15 days of filing by paying an additional processing fee of $1225. •...

Temporary Order Against the Executive Order Remains On Friday, February 3, 2017, a federal court in Washington State issued a temporary order which prohibits the enforcement of certain provisions of the Executive Order signed by President Trump on January 27, 2017: refusal of entry of individuals from the seven countries; refusal of admission of refugees, including those from Syria; and allowing for prioritizing refugee claims based on certain religion. On Tuesday, February 7, 2017, the government argued to an appeals court that the Executive Order should be implemented and that the temporary order issued by the federal court in Washington...

New USCIS Information in connection with Executive Order *** Please also note that as of the writing of this, USCIS has indicated that despite the Executive Order signed by the President on January 27, 2017, it will continue processing applications and petitions regardless of the country of origin of the beneficiary. Please stay tuned. *** The above information has been provided for educational purposes only. Please contact us at your earliest convenience if you have any questions concerning the above and how the information may apply to your particular circumstances.

Timing is everything. Congress sets a limit on the number of H-1B visas available each year. While the H-1B numbers for the next fiscal year do not become available until October 1, 2017, employers may file petitions to request numbers as early as six months in advance, i.e., April 1, 2017. As a result, we are writing to encourage employers to review their hiring needs and determine whether they should initiate H-1B processing for anticipated hires, or even recent hires in other nonimmigrant status now. This past fiscal year, we ran out of H-1B numbers within the first five days...