Court of Appeals Finds USCIS Acted Outside the Law
Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a simple but clear reminder to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that it must act within the bounds of the law. The issue before the court was whether USCIS could properly deny an employment-based, “extraordinary ability” visa because the petitioner had not demonstrated “the research community’s reactions to his [scholarly] publications” – an arbitrary requirement with no justification in the law. The court, in Kazarian v. USCIS, found that USCIS unlawfully imposed a requirement on the petitioner that was not found in the regulations. The court said that “neither USCIS nor an AAO may unilaterally impose novel substantive or evidentiary requirements beyond those set forth [in the regulations].” In other words, USCIS cannot bypass the law.
