Immigration Update

After three years of processing, the U.S. Department of Labor today announced that the permanent foreign labor certification program's backlog was been eliminated. In November 2004, DOL opened temporary Backlog Elimination Centers (BECs) in Dallas and Philadelphia dedicated solely to eliminating the backlog of of labor certification applications submitted under the "old" program with form ETA 750.

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A lawsuit was filed August 29 in the District Court of Northern California challenging the recently-finalized No-Match regulations. Plaintiffs ACLU, National Immigration Law Center, and a group of labor and trade councils asked for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against implementation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "No-Match Letter" regulations. On August 31, federal judge Maxine M. Chesney, in San Francisco temporarily suspended the implementation of these rules, that would make employers verify employment eligibilty of an employee upon receipt of a "no-match" letter. Employers not complying with DHS's regulations will be at risk of civil and/or criminal charges.

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Continue reading "July 2007 Visa Bulletin Ends Retrogression !!" »

Continue reading "Immigration Reform Withdrawn from Senate Floor" »

USCIS announces that its new, dramatically increased, new fee schedule will take effect July 30, 2007. The notice, published yesterday at the Federal Register includes some changes from the proposed fee structure, but the huge increase will go forward. This rule adjusts the fee schedule for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) immigration and naturalization benefit applications and petitions, including nonimmigrant applications and visa petitions. The new fee structure is effective on July 30, 2007, and is posted at www.uscis.gov.

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The Senate "Grand Bargain" bill that will be debated on the Senate floor starting Monday, May 21, contains several unacceptable and unworkable provisions that must be addressed before any bill is passed in the Senate. While the "bargain" certainly contains many important and positive provisions-broad legalization, family backlog clearance, Agjobs, DREAM Act-. The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) believes that these provisions cannot be accepted as a "trade-off" for devastating provisions that would harm families and workers for decades to come. AILA has listed 5 concerns with the Senate's Bill:

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Your urgent action has never been needed more than now, when negotiations on comprehensive immigration reform legislation are nearing a "make or break" point. Although negotiations between a White House-led group of Republican senators and a Kennedy-led group of Democratic senators are on-going, they have not yet yielded any substantive agreement.

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