News Update - May 21, 2009

By Alan Lee, Esq.

H-1B Cap Count and The Faces of the New Immigration Leadership Officials

In H-1B news, the cap count as of May 18, 2009, remained approximately 65,500 of the qualifying 85,000 having been used. Readers should note, however, that the Department of Labor recently announced that the old labor condition application (LCA) system will remain operational through June 30, 2009, instead of shutting after May 14, 2009. This means that a delaying factor in having H-1B petitions expeditiously filed is removed until July 1, 2009, thus promoting quicker use of the remaining members. Under the new LCA system, approvals may require seven days for an adjudication. The present system usually yields an LCA approval instantaneously upon electronic filing. An approved LCA is required as a precondition to filing an H-1B petition.

Confirmation of appointments have been made for the leadership of U.S.I.C.E. to be John Morton, and DHS General Counsel to be Ivan K. Fong; and President Obama has just announced his intention to nominate Alejandro Mayorkas as the new head of U.S.C.I.S. Mr. Morton is described as an career official with expertise in immigration enforcement and criminal prosecution. He began as a trial attorney in 1994 and now serves as the acting deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division. Mr. Fong was previously deputy associate attorney general with the Department of Justice with key responsibility for civil litigation and enforcement. He is considered extremely well versed in cyber crime. Mr. Mayorkas is currently a partner at the prestigious law firm, O'Melveney & Myers, and was previously U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. The National Law Journal recently named him one of the 50 most influential minority lawyers in America.

 


The author is a 26+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

This article © 2009 Alan Lee, Esq.

 

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