Posts Tagged ‘request for evidence’
USCIS Will Begin Accepting H-1B Applications without Certified LCA
USCIS has recently announced that it will begin to accept H-1B petitions filed with uncertified LCAs for a temporary period, ending on March 4, 2010. As many have experienced including our office, the Dept. of Labor’s new iCert process for certifying LCA’s has resulted in unprecedented delays, and has added a new level of unpredictability to the H-1B process. In response to requests, USCIS will accept petitions with uncertified LCA’s and then issue a Request for Evidence (RFE) for the certified LCA before approving the petition. Normally, only petitions with certified LCA’s are accepted. This “temporary flexibility”, as USCIS called it, is somewhat useful, but what happens at H-1B cap time, either in the coming year, on in subsequent years, when we need to file all of those applications by April 1? How will we be sure that the LCA will be certified in time for filing after March 4th? Also, since filing with an uncertified LCA will essentially guarantee a Request for Evidence, are adjudicators going to use that opportunity to throw more items into the request? As it is, applicants are already beleaguered from overly burdensome, redundant, and nonsensical RFE’s.
Tags: certified LCA, DOL, H-1B, LCA, request for evidence, uncertified LCA, USCIS
Posted in H-1B | Read More »
USCIS Fee Hike?
The Associated Press just reported today that USCIS is considering raising its fees for immigration-related benefits due to a shortfall in revenue. Head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Alejandro Mayorkas was quoted in Los Angeles today saying that a fee hike could happen in the next two years. Is Mr. Mayorkas kidding? Instituting another fee hike would be incredible chutzpah on the agency’s part. It was only in 2007 when the last fee hike went into effect, raising the filing fees on some petitions nearly three-fold. We were told then that the increased revenue would improve “customer service” and speed up processing times. Not only did USCIS not deliver on those promises, but in the last two years, service has become even more abysmal, and the adjudicators appear to be as poorly trained as ever. I have an idea for Mr. Mayorkas: if you’re looking to cut operating costs, consider banning your adjudicators from issuing burdensome and nonsensical Requests for Evidence (RFE’s). More often than not, these RFE’s ask for evidence already submitted in the initial petition; or worse, they invent criteria for adjudication that have absolutely nothing to do with the regulations. These RFE’s are issued with alarming regularity. I’m willing to bet that putting an end to this practice would save the agency millions of dollars.
Tags: Alejandro Mayorkas, fee hike, immigration, request for evidence, RFE, USCIS
Posted in USCIS | Read More »
