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An excellent article by Patrick Thibodeau from ComputerWorld, touches the issue of possible H1B visa Green Card increase by President Obama. While his position on immigration is not entirely clear, Obama is smart enough to link the US prosperity with a major Immigration reform.

President-Elect Barack Obama has supported the H-1B visa program and wants to make changes to green cards that would help tech firms. There wasn’t much said about this issue during the presidential campaign, especially after Wall Street collapsed. It also never came up in the debates between Obama and Republican John McCain. Now we’re in a recession and unemployment is rising. Can Obama push ahead on tech-related immigration issues at this time? He might, and in this FAQ, here’s an explanation of how that might happen.

Some tech lobbyists believe that increases in H-1B visas and green cards won’t happen as long as U.S. companies are cutting jobs. But that will mean the debate will shift as well. “What do we need to do to ensure that we can grow our way out of this [downturn], innovate our way out this? You can’t have that discussion without talking about immigration,” said Robert Hoffman, vice president of congressional and legislative affairs at Oracle Corp., and co-chairman of Compete America, a lobbying group that supports raising the H-1B visa cap.

This is a very important update for all our I- 601 waiver clients and readers of this Blog that follow this area of law. As noted in other postings regarding the move of the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez to its new facility this month, the USCIS overseas office in Juarez will also be moving.

The USCIS office will be located in the consular compound, rather than in an off-site location. Thus, November 5, 2008, is the last fully operational day for the office before the move. The office will be closed November 6 through November 11. There will be no communication via telephone, e-mail, or fax during the relocation from November 6 through November 12, and the office will be providing only emergency services.

The USCIS office will start accepting a limited number of 601 waiver applications again on November 12, 2008, as the consulate reopens. The schedule is to start with approximately 20 waiver cases on November 12, and then ramp up to the normal 100 per day on November 17.

The former CEO of Agriprocessors Inc., was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents Thursday and charged with criminal violations of immigration law. The charges were announced by U.S. Attorney Matt M. Dummermuth, Northern District of Iowa.

The complaint alleges that the week before a May 12, 2008, ICE enforcement operation at

Agriprocessors in Postville, Rubashkin – then the CEO of Agriprocessors – loaned $4,500 in $100

A U.S. citizen held at a border immigration center for 15 days has been released after an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer showed a birth certificate to federal authorities. Guillermo Olivares Romero, who has robbery and forgery convictions and has been deported twice, was taken into custody at San Diego’s Otay Mesa detention center on Sept. 25.

The 25-year-old Los Angeles man was released Oct. 9 when an ACLU attorney presented birth, school and vaccination records. Olivares told the Los Angeles Times immigration authorities don’t believe him when he shows his birth certificate.

Read the story here….

Department of Labor released very interesting statistics about PERM cases filed during 2008. Here are some highlights:

Approximately 49,205 cases were certified during the first quarter of FY 2008; 63% of foreign workers on H-lB visas. The top 5 states of intended employment for these permanent labor certifications were California (11,835), New York (5,049), New Jersey (4,503), Texas (3,816), and Florida (2,709);

Alien beneficiaries representing 179 different countries were certified for permanent employment in the u.s. The top 10 countries of citizenship of alien beneficiaries included India (16,569), Mexico (3,444), China (3,328), South Korea (3,119), Philippines (2,995), Canada (2,539), United Kingdom (913), Pakistan (887), Taiwan (821), and Ecuador (811); and

According to Law.com Bianca Jagger and other foreign nationals who are in the United States on tourist visas (B2 Visas) cannot meet New York City’s “primary residence” requirement entitling them to rent-stabilized apartments, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

Jagger, a human rights activist and the first wife of Rolling Stones’ frontman Mick Jagger, has been fighting ejection from her $4,600-a-month Manhattan apartment for more than three years.

Read the story here

The Department of Homeland Security just released an advance copy of the supplemental final rule on safe-harbor procedures for employers who receive an Social Security Administration No-Match letter.

The No Match Rule decribes the “constructive knowledge” that indicates an employee has provided a false SSN to his/her employer. It also outlines the process the DHS wants employers to use to respond to the SSA no-match letters.

While the new No Match Rule does not give the DHS access to the list of employers that received the no-match letters, the DHS will send general notices to employers telling them what their obligations are to follow immigration laws, and how they must be able to prove they are in compliance.

Home loans held by illegal immigrants in California and across the nation generally have had fewer delinquencies than similar loans held by U.S. citizens, in part because of stricter lending requirements, according to banks, insurers and Realtors.

More than 12,000 home loans were issued in recent years through a special program that relies on government-issued taxpayer identification numbers instead of Social Security numbers, according to the association. The identification numbers, known as ITINs, were designed for foreign-born residents living legally in the U.S. but are widely acknowledged to be used primarily by illegal immigrants.

Many of the mortgages nationwide came out of a partnership between Citibank and Acorn Housing, a nonprofit group that helps the poor. Citibank said the taxpayer identification loans have some of the lowest delinquency rates among all affordable-lending programs.

Exciting news to report from our border crossing here in San Diego. Jose Canseco was held for nearly 10 hours by immigration authorities after agents said they stopped the former baseball star with a fertility drug as he returned from Mexico.

Canceco was detained at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing Thursday after agents searched his vehicle and said they found human chorionic gonadotropin, which is illegal without a prescription. A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Virginia Kice, said Canseco was ordered to appear in federal court in San Diego “related to an alleged smuggling violation”.

Read more here

The death last year of Boubacar Bah, a Guinean tailor held in a New Jersey jail for overstaying his visa, showed immigration detention to be one of the most secretive corners of American life. But now Mr. Bah’s story is being retold in an unusually public way: in an online video game.

The game — created by Breakthrough, an international human rights organization in New York that is trying to get the public behind efforts to strengthen oversight, due process and medical help in immigration detention

Read More here