Thursday, December 6, 2012

USCIS DIRECTOR ACKNOWLEDGED WEAKNESS OF IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

From ILW.COM:
Speaking at MIT recently, USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged that our current immigration system is stifling economic prosperity, particularly in the high-tech and start-up fields. To combat this, Mayorkas notes the service is training additional adjudicators to handle petitions like H-1B's and that adjudicators have been advised to be somewhat less critical of petitions coming from start-ups than they were five years ago. Professor Vivek Wadhwa lauded Mayorkas' moves, but also raised the continuing issue of human error that USCIS has not been able to properly address - that the same petition before different adjudicators might yield disparate results. Wadhwa was also critical of the USCIS policies that make movement by entrepreneurs difficult and time consuming, often to a point where those bright people choose not to bother with hassle that accompanies immigrating to the U.S. USCIS deserves some credit for publicizing immigration options for entrepreneurs, like through the new "Entrepreneur Pathways" website, but the service has not yet done the heavy lifting, so to speak - relaxing its draconian policies that Mayorkas publicly admits no longer work in today's global economy and cutting out unnecessary red tape. How else can and should the service tackle this growing problem?

Here are a few ideas of my own:
First, get rid of the Neufeld memo requiring "employer-employee" relationship in the H-1B context. This is ridiculous that an entrepreneur who is a majority shareholder in a business cannot legally work in it under an H-1B visa. It was allowed before and should be allowed now. Other temporary visa types permit this, why is the H-1B different?
Second, limit the RFEs or request for additional evidence in legitimate cases. Open up communications with immigration lawyers who can pinpoint problems in the system and punish/discipline USCIS officers who are abusing the system and creating problems for legitimate applications.
Third, approve National Interest Waiver or NIW petitions for entrepreneurs that have technology inventions or employ a certain number of U.S. citizens.
I have a few more ideas but the top 3 are the most critical right now.

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