Below is our top 10 list of changes that the current administration has put into place, without legislation or regulations, that drastically change the immigration landscape for employers, immigrants, and their families:
10. USCIS increases site visits to employers who hire H-1B and L-1 nonimmigrant workers.
9. Consular officers re-adjudicate approved employment-based petitions to ensure the foreign national is eligible for the benefit even though USCIS already approved that petition.
8. Administration re-examines the current policy of granting work authorization documents to H-4 spouses.
7. USCIS no longer affords deference to nonimmigrant visa extensions but instead will treat those cases as completely new filings.
6. The Justice Department plans to accelerate immigration case proceedings and implement judicial quotas, threatening due process.
5. Supreme Court lifts stay on travel ban for eight countries even where the foreign national has a close family relationship to a U.S. citizen.
4. CBP and consular officers undertake extreme vetting of foreign nationals at ports of entry and at consulates in the name of “Buy American and Hire American.”
3. TPS ends for several countries whose nationals have lived and worked in the United States for many years and whose children were born here.
2. DACA recipients remain in limbo, with an average of 120 recipients’ protection expiring daily and no congressional action in sight.
And, the number one threat to immigrants, their employers, and their families for 2018:
- The government does not seem to want foreign nationals to become or remain legal.
(Why? Because the government has enacted policies aimed at reducing legal immigration and obstructing those who have the ability to become or remain legal, to include the targeting of visa-violators despite having available remedies under the law.)
