INFINITI LAW
Immigration Bulletin
Summer 2006
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Infiniti Law is a transactions-based law practice that provides innovative, superior quality, and cost-effective legal solutions to companies in the areas of corporate and general business law, intellectual property law, employment law, and business immigration law. The company's vision is to act as the equivalent of an 'in-house corporate counsel' for your company---providing all of the typical transactional legal services needed to establish, run, and protect your business in a cost-effective, service oriented manner.

BALCA (Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals) has issued a decision in the first scheduled PERM case appeal, Matter of HealthAmerica, in which the decision was in favor of the employer! The PERM application had been denied because of a typographical error in the date of an advertisement. The Board made the decision that the Certifying Officer's denial of reconsideration of the case was an abuse of discretion.
The Department of Labor has ramped up its efforts to get 45 day letters processed. On 7/11/06, the DOL announced that all 45 day letters would be sent out by 7/18/06. Procedures have been announced for filing Requests to Reopen based on non-receipt of the 45 day letter. Also procedures have been announced for filing Requests to Reopen in cases where a timely response to the 45 day letter was filed but the Department of Labor erroneously closed the case. Strict timing deadlines apply for Requests to Reopen.

On 5/23/06, the USCIS issued a notice in the Federal Register designating that Form I-140 ("Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker"), Form I- 539 ("Application to Extend/Change Status") & Form I-765 ("Application for Employment Authorization") are eligible for expedited processing via the CIS' Premium Processing Service. Issues remain regarding the procedural implementation date.
As of 7/23/06, the CIS reports that 18,368 cases (6,604 approved & 12,254 pending) have been received toward the 20,000 annual cap available to H1b applicants who have received an advanced degree (i.e. Masters degree or higher) from a US school. Caution: the figures reported by the CIS include only receipted petitions. As of 7/23/06, the CIS estimated that they had approximately 374 H1b petitions not yet receipted which have been filed under the Advance Degree exemption. As such, any H1b filings based on the Advanced Degree exemption should be filed immediately to avoid quota issues.

If you know of anyone who would be interested in receiving our immigration bulletin, please feel free to forward it using the link below. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to call or email me.

Sincerely,
Charlotte Danielsson, Esq
JD Stanford Law School; BA Economics--UC Berkeley

phone: (415)874-3540
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