Coping with the New Immigration Trend
Posted on January 03, 2008 by Warren Wen | Category: Immigration
How Can Employers Cope with the New Trend of the USCIS?
In recent months, immigration policy has become increasingly tough when it comes to employers. It is reflected both in new DOL rules on the restriction of Labor Certification applications, which will be effective this July, and new DHS rules, which will bring significant civil and even criminal consequences to employers who hire illegal aliens.
Recently, we received a lot of RFEs (Request For Evidence) from the USCIS, many of which are for employment-based immigration applications. To a certain extent, this shows that the USCIS is getting tougher on the review of employment-based immigration applications. Besides requesting for normal documents, these RFEs also request those employers who sponsored several employees at the same time to provide more financial evidence proving that they are able to pay these people. They also require these employers to provide a list detailing all the I-140 petitions they have filed in the past. This last requirement is unprecedented. The request has put employers in industries where labor shortage is prominent in a dilemma: on one hand, the risk of hiring illegal labor now has greater consequences, discouraging the employment of illegal workers; on the other hand, the shortage of legal labor pushes employers to either hire more foreign workers or file immigration applications for the existing legal employees. However, the review of these applications is tougher, making their approval harder to get.
For instance, a construction company needs to hire numerous employees for a new large project, but the corporation cannot provide sufficient evidence to prove that it can afford to pay so many employees. What can they do to meet the situation?
According to our years’ of experience, it is not easy to avoid such RFEs in the process of green card application, but if the employers pay more attention to the details they can avoid a lot of problems:
- It is better not to file several green card applications for employees at the same time, avoiding RFEs to a certain extent.
- If the employer has different businesses, it is better for him to file different green card applications under the name of different businesses.
- When provide supporting documents to prove financial ability, it is better to prepare all necessary materials. For example, if the tax return is not good enough, employers should be ready to provide either financial reports from accountants or bank statements to prove that it has the financial ability to support the employees.
This article is only for your reference. Please do not apply mechanically to any exact cases. You are welcome to consult our attorneys at Liu & Associates, P.C. For contact information, please click here.