Search
Contact
Login
Share this article
Get this news and more in the new episode of BAL’s podcast, the BAL Immigration Report, available on Apple, Spotify and Google Podcasts or on the BAL news site.
This alert has been provided by the BAL U.S. Practice Group.
Copyright ©2023 Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP. All rights reserved. Reprinting or digital redistribution to the public is permitted only with the express written permission of Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP. For inquiries, please contact copyright@bal.com.
It’s May 25, and this is your BAL Immigration Report.
“That’s I think where we are — they’ve addressed a lot of the bleeding, they’ve stopped the bleeding. They’ve gotten there, but they still have work to do to resolve this systematic problem.”
— Shev Dalal-Dheini, AILA Director of Government Relations
The U.S. State Department says it has reduced the time required for administrative processing — or additional screening that must be undertaken before a consular officer can approve a visa application. Applications may go through administrative processing for a number of reasons, including more thorough security vetting. In a recent statement, the department said that since Oct. 22, 2022, most cases that would have previously required administrative processing were resolved immediately without additional time-consuming handling. BAL saw an uptick in administrative processing last spring but has seen improvement in recent months.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law requiring some private employers to verify the employment eligibility and immigration status of new hires. Beginning July 1, employers with 25 or more employees must use the E-Verify system to confirm individuals’ employment eligibility. Employers who fail to use the E-Verify system could be fined up to $1,000 per day and have their licenses suspended or revoked starting July 1, 2024.
The new E-Verify law in Florida is expected to face legal challenges, and its impact on various aspects of employment and immigration remains uncertain. However, employers subject to the new law should be prepared to implement the E-Verify system by July 1, 2023, if the law’s implementation proceeds as scheduled.
A conversation with American Immigration Lawyers Association Director of Government Relations Shev Dalal-Dheini: the status of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ efforts to reduce barriers to immigration.
BAL Immigration Report: Two years ago, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, or AILA, submitted a 20-page comment to USCIS, offering suggestions on how it could improve in key areas. Earlier this month, AILA reviewed the agency’s progress toward implementing these recommendations. This week, we’ll play the first in a two-part conversation with Shev Dalal-Dheini, AILA’s director of government relations.
Dalal-Dheini: In April 2021, per an executive order, USCIS issued a notice seeking input from the public about how it could reduce administrative barriers to the services it provides. This is a really important opportunity for the public to give input on not only the day-to-day problems they have working with USCIS and submitting cases to USCIS but also bigger-picture policy issues as well. So what AILA did — you know, we are a membership organization of about 17,000 immigration attorneys and professors, so they are the people who are on the ground day to day filing these cases — and so we worked with our volunteer members to compile the list. AILA has volunteers that work on different issues like USCIS field operations , EB-5 policy issues, issues with service centers, and also asylum and verification issues.
We worked with them to say, what are the most important issues you see, that your committee is facing, that you face on a day-to-day basis? Then we came up with this list of about 80 different recommendations. A lot of them are in the weeds, because sometimes it’s the smallest little thing that an administration can do that could really make your case extra-complicated. So some of our recommendations are like that because we’re saying that makes such a big difference. We really focused on three main areas in this comment — we talked about customer service, regulations and policies that could be updated, as well as efficiency in adjudication. That was our three primary areas that we focused this on because, in reality, those are the three biggest issues that our members have to deal with on a day-to-day basis in getting cases through the process.
BAL: Dalal-Dheini said USCIS has come a long way from where it was at the end of the Trump administration.
Dalal-Dheini: I think we have to level-set — where was USCIS two years ago? After the Trump administration, the agency had pretty much been decimated in many respects. There were a lot of policy changes and procedural changes that made adjudications really slow, really inefficient, but then they also had a financial issue and people were coming off a threatened furlough of a significant part of their workforce. So that was USCIS at the end of the Trump administration, beginning of the Biden administration.
What we define as progress might not seem like progress in someone’s day-to-day case, but where we’ve seen a lot of progress is they’ve started taking steps to suture up all the little cuts that they’ve had, and now they’re going deeper to resolve the issues, the plaguing issues, issues that have been around and are systematic. And so that’s I think where we are — they’ve addressed a lot of the bleeding, they’ve stopped the bleeding. They’ve gotten there, but they still have work to do to resolve the systematic problems. This is an agency that has had decades of problems, right? It’s never been an easy place to practice.
BAL: Addressing USCIS’ systematic problems will be a big challenge, but Dalal-Dheini credits the agency with finding some ways to soften the impact to individuals.
Dalal-Dheini: One area where they have definitely made really good progress is that they’ve been able to use creative mechanisms to expedite adjudication and streamline adjudications. That is really important in the sense of helping to reduce backlogs. For example, USCIS has decided to reuse biometrics or eliminate biometrics requirements for certain individuals. So if they’ve already collected it once, there’s no need to call an individual back to an application support center to have them recapture their biometrics — your fingerprints don’t change, they have that information, they can just reuse it automatically. So they’ve done a lot more of reusing biometrics. They’ve also started eliminating biometrics for people who don’t necessarily need it.
In the same vein, they’ve looked to auto-extending employment authorizations. One of the areas where we’ve seen a lot of delays early on was employment authorization applications, there were significant delays. And in order to address the harm that comes from someone’s EAD not being renewed on time, they started auto-extending it, giving a little bit more life. If you timely filed an application, your EAD would be valid for maybe 540 extra days, and that helped ease some of the pain that people were being caused by their delayed adjudications.
They did that similarly for the Form I-90, increasing the validity of receipt notices from 12 months to 24 months. Now, this doesn’t mean their cases are being processed faster. It just means that they’ve found ways to stop the harm from the delays, if that makes sense. So they are still slow in many respects, but at least the impact to the individual is not as bad.
BAL: In next week’s spotlight, we’ll hear more from Dalal-Dheini on USCIS’ efforts to streamline adjudications and what AILA and its members can do continue to press the agency to reduce barriers to immigration benefits and services. That’s next week on the BAL Immigration Report.
In Singapore, the government introduced a new online system for employment pass services. Employment Pass Online has been replaced with EP eService, which is accessed through the Ministry of Manpower portal. Employers can use the new system to apply, renew, appeal, issue, cancel or withdraw a pass, as well as view details of their transactions or organization profile. Individuals who submitted an application with the old system will be able to continue it on the new platform. EP eService is expected to streamline immigration services provided to employers and foreign nationals.
In Hong Kong, immigration authorities increased the number of occupations on the Talent List, from 13 to 51. Foreign nationals working in designated occupations are now eligible to apply for the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme, General Employment Policy and Admission Scheme for Mainland Talents and Professionals. Authorities expanded the Talent List to meet the region’s development needs and attract more highly skilled foreign nationals to live and work in the region.
In South Africa, the government introduced the Trusted Employer Scheme to allow eligible companies to more quickly obtain work visas for highly skilled foreign nationals. To become a Trusted Employer, a company must demonstrate its financial capacity to employ a foreign national, its commitment to training programs for South African citizens and its status as a responsible corporate entity. Initially, only 100 companies will be accepted into the program. After a 100-day review period, officials plan to allow more companies to register for the scheme.
Follow us on X, and sign up for daily immigration updates. We’ll be back next week with more news from the world of corporate immigration.
In this week’s episode, BAL’s Gabriel Castro and Kristi Ngo discuss a recent end-of-summer event they attended with a group…
In this week’s episode, BAL’s Chad Li and Kyle McLaughlin discuss common questions about the PERM process and identify four…
In this week’s episode, BAL’s Kristi Ngo explains why the EB-5 visa is a viable alternative to the traditional PERM…
In this week’s episode, BAL’s Tiffany Derentz provides an update on the U.S. Department of State’s domestic visa renewal pilot…