Discover 10 best practices that challenge the traditions and myths surrounding immigration law/legal services and will streamline your immigration process. New chapter published!

Chapter 1: Pick the right provider and manage the relationship for success Chapter 2: Use the right technology in structuring an efficient immigration process Chapter 3: Lower and control your cost Chapter 4: Define and frequently review your corporate immigration policy Chapter 5: Map the immigration process steps to educate stakeholders Chapter 6: Educate stakeholders about their responsibilities & manage their expectations

Chapter 7: Give employees direct access to their case information and legal advice In this chapter, learn how to:

Address a fundamental process flaw wasting HR time and frustrating employees: HR's role of the middleman between employees and immigration provider Provide employees direct access to real-time case information so they ask fewer questions...

The recession has been tough on any company but record unemployment levels put small/medium sized and technology companies especially under the government's immigration microscope. But, in times when competitors may shy away from hiring foreign top talent, the potential for    gaining an edge through smart immigration decisions increases.     The critical question remaining - Is immigration still a viable business strategy to stay competitive for SMBs  and technology companies? The answer is yes - provided you know how to respond to the changes in laws and        regulations.  Attend this webcast to understand how you can make immigration work most effectively for your business. You'll learn how to develop a sound immigration process tailored to the specific needs of SMBs and tech companies. We'll review    recent legislative and regulatory changes, analyze viable visa types, and provide recommendations for efficiently managing the process from pre-filing to post-approval. An immigration attorney will also host a live Q&A....

The immigration reform see-saw on Capitol Hill continued this month. President Obama's State of the Union address, the competing White House top priorities, the mood in Congress resulting from resignations and election jitters, and the lacking progress on a comprehensive bill all add up to a rather bleak outlook of CIR passage this year. For the time being, Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security continues its enforcement-only strategy considered to be somewhat ineffective, but is the only tangible government immigration action at the moment. However, there are still signs of hope and efforts to keep CIR at the top of the agenda continue.

CIR headwinds

The end of January brought bleak news with CIR seemingly positioned as an after thought during President Obama's State of the Union Address....

As the second quarter of the immigration fiscal year comes to a close, the March 2010 Visa Bulletin has almost every employment-based immigration category moving forward.  This is particularly good news for Indian nationals in the EB second preference category, which has not seen any movement at all since the beginning of the fiscal year in October 2009. After five straight months of holding the cutoff date at 01/22/2005, the priority date for Indian nationals in the EB second category finally moved forward by nine days, to 02/01/2005.  Those in EB third advanced by the same amount of time, from 06/22/2001 to 07/01/2001. Nationals of China continue to see fairly good progress, with a move forward of almost 1½ months to 07/08/2005 for those in the EB-2 preference category and almost 3 months to 12/15/2002 for those in EB-3. Nationals of the Philippines and those from all other countries besides India,...

On April 1, 2010, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting H-1B applications for applicants beginning employment on October 1, 2010 or later. Although April 1 is a little more than a month away, you need to start your H-1B FY2011 application process now, because the volume of H-1B petitions filed at the end of 2009 (October-December 2009) increased almost 7-fold and it's highly likely that this trend will continue into 2010. This means that the H-1B cap could be met and exceeded on or shortly after April 1st.

Employers need to be aware of the recent regulatory and process changes affecting H-1Bs and review their H-1B application practices to avoid potential processing delays, RFEs and denials. Changes that...

Foreign long-term residents (non-EU foreign nationals who plan to stay for more than 90 days) in the Czech Republic must now meet new health insurance requirements. Previously all medical health insurance companies coverage was accepted, but as of January 1, 2010, Czech authorities will only accept health insurance from only approved insurance companies. The new rule applies to all foreign nationals seeking entry and those already living in the Czech Republic, and will be strictly enforced starting March 31, 2010.

Health insurance compliance will be critical when submitting a long-term residence permit application and if subjected to a residence check by the Czech Police. It remains unclear at this point if proof of insurance will be required for long-term...

The Department of State (DOS) recently published a proposed rule in the Federal Register to increase the Fees for Consular Services for nonimmigrant visa application and border crossing card processing fees.  The proposed rule also establishes a tiered structure with separate fees for different visa categories. The Department is proposing the fee increase to ensure that there are sufficient resources to cover the increasing cost of processing nonimmigrant visas.  This increase applies both to non-immigrant visas placed in passports and to border crossing cards issued to certain adult and minor applicants in Mexico.  The measures have come in the wake of a finding that the U.S. Government is not fully covering its costs for the processing of these visas under the current cost structure. U.S. law requires the Department of State to attempt to recover the cost of processing non-immigrant...

The Economic Policy Institute, an independent nonprofit nonpartisan D.C. think tank, released a new study entitled Immigration and Wages, which reinforces the results from previous studies that "immigration has a small but positive impact on the wages of native-born workers overall." Overall, economist Heidi Shierholz concludes in the study that the "effect of immigration from 1994 to 2007 raised the wages of U.S.-born workers, relative to foreign-born workers at all levels of education, including those with less than a high-school education." While there is broad agreement among economists that immigration has a small, positive effect on the average wages of native-born workers, they remain divided over the effects of immigration on specific groups of U.S. workers (particularly those with low levels of education). ...

Before his resignation from CNN in November 2009, Lou Dobbs was a prominent illegal-immigration and Latino community opponent. Since 2004, on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" he was notorious for his conservative populist stance and promotion of immigration misinformation -using illegal immigrants as the scapegoat for America's problems such as crime, jobs and diseases. Media Matters, a not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media, released a comprehensive report detailing Dobbs' immigration coverage. Examples include:

The "reconquista" myth: Dobbs' repeatedly advanced the smear that some Mexican Americans and Mexican citizens (particularly "illegal aliens") are plotting to take over the U.S. Southwest for Mexico Dobbs spreads...

The U.S. Department of Labor recently reversed Bush-era legislation on the H-2A, agricultural guest worker, program originally enacted in late 2008 and put into effect on January 17, 2009. The Bush-era rules drastically impacted wages (reduced by about a $1/hour) and working conditions for H-2A workers and allowed employers to easily access cheap foreign labor with little oversight. Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, announced the reversal that will increase wages and is meant to strengthen labor protections for foreign and American workers. Effective March 15, the new rules require the following:

Employers will be required to provide documented proof that they looked for qualified U.S. workers to fill jobs; instead of simply attesting to the effort (the DOL will establish a national electronic job registry to help growers find workers from the U.S.) The method of calculating wages for temporary foreign...