In today's turbulent economy, layoffs are increasingly common. This clearly causes tremendous stress for the laid-off employee: aside from the loss of the job itself, the person affected must search for new work, re-arrange finances to make ends meet while he or she is out of work, arranging for health insurance coverage, etc. However when the person laid-off is a foreign national, he or she must deal with another layer of issues, namely, maintaining valid nonimmigrant status. The following questions outline some of the most common issues for laid-off H-1B employees. For simplicity's sake, we will use questions from Sam, a fictional H-1B employee who has recently been laid-off.

  
On Wednesday April 8, 2009, a senior administration official stated that President Obama intends to begin proposing changes to the U.S. immigration system this year, including implementing new regulations to confer legal status on immigrants who currently reside in the U.S. in unlawful status.  President Obama will present his new immigration initiatives as "reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system." 

Administration officials say the President plans to publicly address the issue in May.  He will convene working groups of bipartisan lawmakers and immigration groups over the summer to begin formulating possible legislation for presentation as early as fall. 

As of May 26, USCIS updated the current amount of H-1B visas received. The government agency has received roughly 45,000 H-1B cap-subject petitions, along with 20,000 petitions that qualify for the advanced degree cap exemption. Interestingly to note, USCIS's May 5 update reported the same amount of H-1B cap-subject petitions received.
  
USCIS will continue to accept H-1B nonimmigrant visa petitions for FY 2010 annual cap. When the agency receives the necessary number of petitions to meet these caps for FY 2010, it will issue a notice to advise the public that the cap has been met by its specified final receipt date. That final receipt date will be based on the date that USCIS received the petition and not the date that the petition was postmarked.
  
USCIS will then randomly select the number of petitions required to reach the cap limits for the H-1B program for FY 2010 from all petitions received on or before the specified final receipt date. Cap-subject petitions not randomly selected will be rejected by USCIS, as will those petitions received after the final receipt date. Please note that petitions filed on behalf of H-1B workers who have previously been counted against an annual cap will not count toward the FY 2010 H-1B cap. USCIS will continue to process petitions for H-1B workers (or those petitioning on their behalf) that wish to extend the amount of time they may remain in the U.S., change their terms of employment, change employers, or work concurrently in a second H-1B position.
 

  
On Friday, April 17, 2009 the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would again postpone the mandate that all federal contractors (and their subcontractors) verify their employees' employment eligibility using E-Verify, the government's online electronic employment eligibility verification system. The requirement was supposed to have originally taken effect on January 15, 2009. The Bush White House delayed it until February 20, 2009, and in late January, the Obama White House delayed it again, until May 21, 2009. The current delay would push the mandate back even further, this time until June 30, 2009.

After first being published as a final rule in the fall of 2008, the requirement that government contractors use E-Verify received criticism from a number of groups. Last fall, business groups that include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Society for Human Resource Management filed suit to block the implementation of the requirement on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. Stay tuned for more information on e-verify implementation.
 

  
The NBC Liaison Committee has learned that a problem with the interface tool for the "Case Status Online" has caused delays in the entry of new receipt numbers into the system and in the updating of status information for filings already in the system. The problem, which is not limited to NBC filings, has been recurring and we were not given a time estimate as to when the interface tool will be fixed.

The above information is courtesy of the AILA InfoNet Doc.
 

  
This newsletter has been prepared for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.  No information included herein shall create an attorney/client relationship or constitute an invitation for such a relationship. This newsletter is not intended to be an advertisement.  You should always seek professional, independent legal consultation before taking or refraining from any action.