Increased RFE & Denial of H-1Bs and American Immigration Council Just Filed a FOIA Lawsuit Demanding to Release Undisclosed New Standards for RFE & Denials

[tacobell fan]

06/13/2018: Increased RFE & Denial of H-1Bs and American Immigration Council Just Filed a FOIA Lawsuit Demanding to Release Undisclosed New Standards for RFE & Denials

• Obviously pursuant to the Presidential Order of Buy American, Hire American, the USCIS has growingly issued RFE (Request for Evidence) and Denials of H-1B petitions on obscuous standards. In order to find out what standards the USCIS applies for such massive RFE and denials, the American Immigration Council lately filed a FOIA requests demanding to disclose it without success. For the reasons, the American Immigration Council, on behalf of the AILA,just filed a lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force the agency to release the data. Specifically, the Council wants to find out on what standards and grounds the USCIS has been issuing RFEs or denials of H-1B petitions for the two issues: (1) Issues related to wage levels, wage surveys, and prevailing wage determinations; and (2) Determination of what constitues a "specialty occupation."
• Thumbs up to the Council. Other than these two issues of the Council's contention, lately there have been some incidents where the agency adopted or changed the legal standards for adjudication of employment-based immigration legal issues. For instance, the agency changed its policy of outplacement of STEM OPT on its website without any published policy memorandum or official notice, not to mention the rule-making procedures. For this issue, the stakeholder entity "NAFSA" mailed a protest to the agency. It is hoped that these two events lead the leadership of USCIS more open to the public and enhance the efforts to more interact with the stakeholders and the public.

Source: http://www.immigration-law.com