2023

In Part 1, we described the materials recently received from a Freedom of Information Act request to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  The materials are not only eye-opening but indeed shocking: they show that the students were let down by delinquent government and university actors that failed to warn them of the scam.  Most mind-boggling: the US government is now using its own delinquency as a sword against these students in permanently barring them from the United States and using shell-game tactics to make it is as difficult as possible to challenge the bars.  Here, we provide additional details from those ICE reports: The Homeland Security Investigations Wilmington office identified approximately 1,925 STEM OPT students associated with AzTech. HSI administratively arrested 15 STEM OPT students.  (An administrative arrest is the arrest of a foreign individual for a civil – not criminal – violation of U.S. immigration laws.  These cases are then…

In addition to Amazon, Intel, and Google, according to ICE statistics, Integra Technologies was one of the top 4 employers of OPT students in 2017 and 2018.  In 2019, AzTech was one of the top 4 employers, together with Amazon, Google, and Deloitte. During these three years, Integra and AzTech “employed” nearly 5,000 foreign students.  So why did it take until January 2020 for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to launch a comprehensive investigation into the activities of Integra and AzTech?  This is the mind-boggling conclusion evident in materials received as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. Why was ICE asleep at the wheel, while thousands of innocent, unwitting foreign students were victimized by a years-long scam and now are permanently barred from the United States under Section 212(a)(6)(C)(i) as a result? And where were the university DSOs during this scandal? Last week we finally received internal ICE…

On this site we list 40 reasons an applicant for a student visa can be refused; 34 reasons for a visa denial under Section 214(b); 16 reasons for a K-1 visa refusal; and 14 reasons for an EB-3 visa denial. But not to be outdone, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), in its internal training materials, lists 31 reasons to deny an EB-13 multinational executive/manager immigrant petition; 7 reasons to deny a National Interest Waiver petition; 49 reasons to deny an EB-2 advanced degree/exceptional ability petition;  46 reasons to deny an EB-3 professional petition; 41 reasons to deny an EB-3 skilled workers petition; and 29 reasons to deny an EB-3 other workers petition.  These training materials, obtained as a result of filing a Freedom of Information Act request and suing USCIS, offer eye-opening details about the myriad of possible reasons that a petition can be denied. No wonder USCIS…

I’ve known this for years because we won one of the first visa-delay cases – ever.  The year was 2005, 4 years after 9/11, which resulted in the creation of a new government security bureaucracy. This bureaucracy has grown exponentially over the years – with more and more agencies and personnel involved in the decision-making process, triggering more and more delays. The recent pandemic made the situation much, much worse – leading to colossal delays in adjudicating petitions and visas.  As a result, the time has never been more ripe than now for the filing of mandamus lawsuits. The last month alone provides testament.  In a B-1 visitor visa case that had been pending under Section 221(g) for more than 5 years, we filed suit against the Department of State.  Within 3 ½ months of the filing of the lawsuit, our client was issued a visa. In an I-829 EB-5…

Have you ever been refused a visitor (B) or student (F) visa and re-applied again a short time later, and when you attend your new interview, the consular officer asks you: “What has changed since your last interview?”  And within seconds or a minute or two, the consul then handed you a refusal sheet – again?  The funny thing is – well, it is not-so-funny – there is no such legal requirement to show that something changed in your circumstances in order to qualify for the visa. The Department of State and the consular officer concocted this “requirement” out of whole cloth: it’s fictitious. Section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act has two requirements for B and F visa applicants: 1) overcome the presumption that he or she is an intending immigrant to the United States; and 2) qualify for the visa.  To qualify for a visitor visa, the…

Below is a table of the current interview wait times for B-1/B-2 applications at certain embassies and consulates around the world. Despite promises from the Department of State, the massive wait times in most countries, as you can see, have not been reduced.  City October 7, 2022 March 24, 2023 May 19, 2023 Rio de Janeiro 347 449 449 Sao Paulo 338 554 595 Brasilia 315 469 483 Mumbai 825 332 507 New Delhi 833 247 379 Hyderabad 459 246 351 Chennai 780 680 337 Kolkata 767 357 490 Guadalajara 806 664 731 Mexico City 641 695 730 Tijuana 555 541 567 Lagos 735 486 563 Abuja 850 409 307 Madrid 380 329 335 Paris 520 50 93 London 34 89 90 Berlin 58 87 42 Prague 100 16 105 Outrage is growing among the American business community, as wait times exceed 1 year (!)  for an interview at dozens…

Here, we finalize our list of the top 15 trends and observations relating to Section 212(a)(6)(C)(i) – findings of willful, material misrepresentations: 11. The Role of ICE/HSI.   Most individuals who have either submitted a work or immigration petition or application or entered the United States are familiar with the government agencies involved in those processes – US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), respectively.  And many are familiar with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as the “immigration police”: ICE enforces US immigration laws within the United States.  But not many are aware that the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) branch of ICE has officers embedded into certain consulates overseas and that those officers make findings of inadmissibility. ICE denies that it makes such findings – its position is that it is the consular officer who makes such findings, not ICE.  However, we have seen internal government…