By Brian A. Wadsworth

Employers are well aware that the protections provided by 42 U.S.C. § 1981 extend to both United States citizens and permanent residents, colloquially referred to as “green card holders.”

Some employers, however, may be unaware that lawfully present aliens who are not green card holders may also be protected by § 1981. In Ruben Juarez v.
Continue Reading Lawfully Present And Protected

By: Pavan Dhillon

Canada, much like the United States, has adopted increasingly protectionist immigration policies that are intended to strengthen the Canadian economy by restricting both temporary resident and permanent residency applications. Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) administer and adjudicate Canadian Immigration related applications and are responsible for
Continue Reading Canadian Immigration – Navigating an Increasingly Strict Compliance Regime

By Angelo A. Paparelli

Samuel Herbert, Her Majesty’s Home Secretary from 1931-32 (the British equivalent of the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security), could well have been speaking about two recent immigration-related events when he quipped that “bureaucracy” is “a difficulty for every solution.”

One is an October 30 Settlement Agreement between Indian It consulting giant, Infosys, and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas.The other is an October 18 decision by U.S. federal district court judge, William J. Martini, involving the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and CAMO Technologies, a much smaller Indian IT consulting firm.  

Both reflect a victory, of sorts, for Indian IT firms over U.S. immigration bureaucrats and enforcement agents, and both shed light on the little-discussed crossroads where ambiguous immigration rules bisect the relations between corporate customers and their technology consultants.
Continue Reading Four Post-Infosys Strategies for Corporate Customers and Consultants to Minimize Immigration Risks

By Angelo Paparelli

As noted in our last post, American businesses which offer U.S. secondments to their executives, managers and specialists from affiliated entities abroad must take proactive measures to address several ominous developments adversely affecting the tried-and-true L-1 work visa category for Intracompany Transferees.

Even if a U.S. company can’t tell an L-1 from an elbow, concern over
Continue Reading The L-1 Intracompany Transferee Visa Facing Attack — from All Branches of the Federal Government (Part II)

By Angelo Paparelli

U.S. employers have likely grown accustomed to the longstanding controversy over the highly coveted  H-1B visa for workers in a “Specialty Occupation” — the nonimmigrant category whose annual quota for professional workers often is exhausted within a week of each year’s new allotment.  The H-1B controversy arose because of apocryphal or largely unproven allegations, fueled by media
Continue Reading The L-1 Intracompany Transferee Visa Facing Attack — from All Branches of the Federal Government (Part I)