What Are Potential Small Business Impacts of New Immigration Policies?
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B. Interviews are Now Required for Employment-Based Greencard Applicants
The Buy American/Hire American order also inspired the recent decision by USCIS to re-institute interviews for employment based greencard applications after decades of not requiring such interviews.
The rationale for reinstituting the interview requirement is to mitigate the risks of fraud the Administration insists has infested the legal immigration applications process, but the evidence of fraud in the system is scant. What the reinstitution of interviews is likely to accomplish, in practice, is merely to lengthen green card processing substantially for the most skilled applicants by months and, maybe, even years.
C. Hire American and its Effect on Consular Processing
The implementation of the Buy American/Hire American directive has also resulted in an increase in consular officers’ denying otherwise viable visa applications, or requesting additional information to show the bonafides of the offered position, including that an effort was made by the American employer or investor to hire Americans for the offered position.
To impose a recruitment requirement is wholly in contradiction to current law, but insofar as consular determinations are virtually unreviewable, and denials can be couched in the vaguest terms, the room for gross abuse is vast.
The Take Away:
- We can expect a higher number of challenges and denials and a resultant increase in court challenges to USCIS policies designed to restrict all forms of immigration;
- The Administration is not only targeting undocumented labor, but is just as aggressively targeting highly skilled and educated foreign nationals.
- Executive orders, many of which have little basis in considered study, are having a material impact on how enforcement agencies are implementing policies on the ground. Adjudication abuses are likely to proliferate while it is unlikely that the Administration will take meaningful steps to address such abuses.
- The Trump Administration is likely to raise even more administrative barriers to legal immigration so that the process becomes much longer, more onerous, and even less predictable.
Related articles:
Does Immigration Benefit Business?
Immigration Fraud Requires Pro-active Action
Five Insights on the State of Immigration, Politics and Business
