As President Donald Trump continues toward his efforts to limit legal immigration to America, he has now begun to tighten the renewal process lawful immigrant workers must go through in order to renew their nonimmigrant work visas. This, in return, will make the process for employers to submit a petition more difficult and expensive.
If you are already a worker here in the U.S., or an employer seeking to higher a legal immigrant to work for your company, then you know that in order for you to receive a nonimmigrant work visa or renew the current one you have, the employer needs to file a petition on your behalf with USCIS. While this process has been a requirement for years now, an update in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policy regarding the renewal process for nonimmigrant work visas was recently released. To be clear, an immigrant visa (IV) is issued to someone who wishes to live permanently in the U.S. and a nonimmigrant visa (NIV) is issued to an individual with permanent residence outside of the U.S.
The news release USCIS issued on October 23, 2017 (which conflicts with federal regulations at 214.2(h)(14), stated that immigration officers who are responsible for handling nonimmigrant work visa renewals will be securitizing renewal applications as though it is the first time it is being filed. Even though a nonimmigrant worker’s circumstances may have stayed the same, they will still be forced to go through this extensive process yet again. According to NBC News, this may entice employers to hire American workers as opposed to immigrants. Why? Hiring an immigrant worker takes more time and effort to hire. The downside, of course, is that it is already expensive to hire a foreign worker, and most employers would hire a U.S. worker IF they were actually available, which frequently they are not. The policy change is actually designed to slow legal immigration to the United States.
Fortunately for you and your employer, if you enlist the help our Atlanta employment and work visa attorneys can provide, the process will run much smoother and be less stressful for the both of you.
Although the goal of the updated policy is to protect the interests of U.S. workers, it will most certainly results in the renewal process to become costlier for employers, and assuredly a great number of the cases may end of litigated in federal court, as the policy itself is extra-regulatory
If you are an immigrant looking to obtain a nonimmigrant work visa for the first time and are not sure of what the process entails to receive it, our Atlanta immigration attorneys can explain this process to you.
Whether you are looking to obtain an H-1B, L-1, E-2, O-1, P-1 or P-2 or other or nonimmigrant work visa, you are going to need a potential employer to submit a petition on your behalf. Only certain nonimmigrant classifications permit you to obtain permission to work in the U.S. without having an employer file a petition for you. Aside from you needing to meet certain criteria, there must also be a visa available as US law has limits set for the number of certain visas to be issued.
If you would like to learn more about the application process, contact us now at Kuck Immigration Partners and speak with a qualified immigrant attorney today.
