Immigration Update with Lin Walker

COVID-19 related travel restrictions and exceptions are increasingly fluid, with immigration practitioners and the general public receiving little if any advance notice of shifting priorities or new restrictions before they are enacted. On April 30, 2021, President Biden issued a Presidential Proclamation that will suspend the entry of nonimmigrants, with certain exceptions, from the Republic of I...

The Biden administration's track record so far with regard to immigration reform reveals a few bright spots but far too many disappointments.

This past Thursday April 15th, AILA held its annual Spring Conference which provided Government Relations Updates from many agencies. The news was mixed and at times, frustrating, but there were some key points that we feel are important. Meyner and Landis attended 7 panels and distilled about 9 hours of presentations into this rapid-fire highlights podcast.

This week the writer of the Immigration Update Podcast, partner Lin Walker, personally brings us an update about how U.S. Embassies and Consulates have been misinterpreting and misapplying Presidential Proclamations, from both Trump and Biden, meant to suspend the entry of those who pose a risk of transmitting COVID-19.

If you were lucky enough to have your H-1B Cap Registration selected, what are the next steps? Well, there is still some work to do! In this week's podcast we will examine and summarize what the H-1B Registration Selection notice states and the next steps for those whose registrations were selected during the fiscal year 2022 lottery.

This week we share some good news about three client success stories in the diverse fields of chemical engineering, social psychology, and music. Each of these stories represent what we consider the very best of the U.S. immigration system and, when the system works well, what it can accomplish.

This week we have some unfortunate COVID related news that has been negatively impacting immigration. We discuss President Biden's Presidential Proclamation 10143 which suspended entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants who pose a risk of transmitting COVID-19. With this new, more stringent requirement for an NIE, the number of NIV and NIE refusals will only increase, further jeopardizing U.S. compan...

This week we talk about a few more details of the current registration process to keep in mind…along with some common mistakes to watch out for and a few tips to help your registration process to go smoothly.

In this informative podcast Meyner & Landis Immigration partner Lin Walker and immigration associate Kristen Sisko discuss one of their recent client success stories. This is an interesting case, concerning the apparent conflict between practical training as authorized by USCIS regulations, hybrid graduate programs as authorized by ICE, and how USCIS determines maintenance of status for F-1 studen...

A sudden advancement in the availability of immigrant visa numbers has led to an exponential increase in the number of immigrant petitions and applications for adjustment of status filed with USCIS. The delays have been compounded by the historically cold and storm-laden winter of 2021.

As we mentioned last week, the overall odds of being selected for an H-1B visa was approximately 30% in last year’s cap, as USCIS received approximately 275,000 registrations for 85,000 H-1B visa numbers. So what are U.S. employers to do if they wish to hire a foreign national, but are not selected in this year’s H-1B cap? The podcast this week is dedicated to describing some of these alternative...

There were several major announcements in the H-1B visa classification this week. Today we are going to talk about two of these announcements that we see as positive developments.

According to USCIS, there were ten common reasons the Agency issued RFEs. In this podcast we’d like to focus on the two of the most common RFEs that we received for H-1B petitions during 2020. We will give you a taste of the language that USCIS uses in these RFEs, our legal analysis and finally we'll offer some strategies for preventing and responding to those RFEs.

On his very first day in office, President Biden announced plans to send a progressive and bold immigration bill to Congress in the coming weeks that will embrace immigrants as an essential part of our society, instead of criminalizing and marginalizing them, as has been the situation in the last four years. There are 2 reforms we’d like to talk about specifically that struck us as most meaningful...

Welcome to the Meyner & Landis Immigration Update Podcast for January 18, 2020 And it’s a doozy. Written by Meyner & Landis partner Lin Walker, this podcast is going to try to summarize for you the recent rule that will change the prevailing wages for nonimmigrant visa classifications. We are providing some charts that may help to clarify some of the changes to come on LinkedIn, but as you will se...

If you are a nonimmigrant foreign national who has been admitted to the United States, this episode is for you. There is one form that is very often overlooked by busy people traveling back to the United States from abroad that, if forgotten, can cause serious problems with your immigration status With this podcast, we hope to provide some guidance on what is essential to controlling one’s lawful...

In this special edition of the M&L Immigration Update Podcast we explore the new rule entitled “Modification of Registration Requirement for Petitioners Seeking to File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions,” which ends the H-1B lottery as we know it and instead establishes a wage-based selection process. The H-1B registrations will be selected based on registrations listing the highest offered wage which eq...

We have some good news to start off the new year! We explain why USCIS has been prohibited from increasing their filing fees, as they have been trying to do.