Source: http://cyrusmehta.blogspot.com/2014/08/
Timestamp: 2017-04-28 21:48:13
Document Index: 16501676

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 204', '§ 245', '§ 245', '§ 245', '§ 245', '§245', '§ 245', '§ 245', '§ 245', '§204', '§274', '§274', '§844', '§101', '§1101', '§844', '§ 844', '§110', '§1229', '§844', '§844', '§844', '§101', '§656']

The Insightful Immigration Blog – Commentaries on Immigration Policy, Cases and Trends: August 2014
While the Obama administration is
working on unveiling administrative fixes to reform the immigration system, we
wish to revive one idea, which we discussed in The Tyranny of Priority Dates. We propose that aliens caught in the
crushing employment-based (EB) or family-based (FB) backlogs could file an
adjustment of status application, Form I-485, based on a broader definition of
visa availability. It would promote efficiency, maximize transparency and
enhance fundamental fairness by allowing someone to file an I-485 application
sooner than many years later if all the conditions towards the green card have
been fulfilled, such as labor certification and approval of the Form I-140,
Form I-130 or Form I-526. We have also learned that the EB-5 for China has
reached the cap, and there will be retrogression in the EB-5 in the same way
that there has been retrogression in the EB-2 and EB-3 for India. Systemic visa
retrogress retards economic growth, prevents family unity and frustrates
individual ambition all for no obvious national purpose
Upon filing of an I-485 application,
one can enjoy the benefits of “portability” under INA § 204(j) in some of the
EB preferences and children who are turning 21 can gain the protection of the
Child Status Protection Act if their age is frozen below 21. Moreover, the
applicant, including derivative family members, can also obtain employment
We acknowledge that INA § 245(a)(3) only allows the filing of an I-485
application when the visa is “immediately available” to the applicant, and this
would need a Congressional fix. What may be less well known, though no less
important, is the fact that the INA itself offers no clue as to what “visa availability”
Bulletin, this is not the only definition that can be employed. Therefore, we
propose a way for USCIS to allow for an I-485 filing before the priority date
becomes current, and still be faithful to § 245(a)(3). The
only regulation that defines visa availability is 8 C.F.R. § 245.1(g)(1), which
An alien is ineligible for the benefits of section 245 of the Act unless an
immigrant visa is immediately available to him or her at the time the
application is filed. If the applicant is a preference alien, the current
Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs Visa Bulletin will be consulted
to determine whether an immigrant visa is immediately available. An immigrant
visa is considered available for accepting and processing the application Form
I-485 [if] the preference category applicant has a priority date on the waiting
list which is earlier than the date shown in the Bulletin (or the Bulletin
shows that numbers for visa applicants in his or her category are current). An
immigrant visa is also considered immediately available if the applicant
Under 8 C.F.R. § 245.1(g)(1), why must visa availability be based solely on
whether one has a priority date on the waiting list which is earlier shown in
the Visa Bulletin? Why can’t “immediately available” be re-defined based on a
qualifying or provisional date? We are all so accustomed to paying obeisance to
the holy grail of “priority date” that we understandably overlook the fact that
this all-important gatekeeper is nowhere defined. Given the collapse of the
priority date system, an organizing principle that was never designed to accommodate the level of demand
that we have now and will likely continue to experience, all of
us must get used to thinking of it more as a journey than a concrete point in time.
The adjustment application would only be approved when the provisional date
becomes current, but the new definition of immediately available visa can
encompass a continuum: a provisional date that leads to a final date, which is
only when the foreign national can be granted lawful permanent resident status
but the provisional date will still allow a filing as both provisional and
final dates will fall under the new regulatory definition of immediately
available. During this period, the I-485 application is properly filed under
INA §245(a)(3) through the new definition of immediately available through the
qualifying or provisional date.
acknowledge that certain categories like the India EB-3 may have no visa
availability whatsoever. Still, the State Department can reserve one visa in
the India EB-3 like the proverbial Thanksgiving turkey. Just like one turkey
every Thanksgiving is pardoned by the President and not consumed, similarly one
visa can also be left intact rather than consumed by the alien beneficiary. So long as there is one visa kept available, our
proposal to allow for an I-485 filing through a provisional filing date would
propose the following amendments to 8 C.F.R. § 245.1(g)(1), shown here in bold,
that would expand the definition of visa availability:
shows that numbers for visa applicants in his or her category are current) (“current
adjudication only occurs when there is a current priority date. An
immigrant visa is also considered immediately available if the applicant establishes
eligibility for the benefits of Public Law 101-238. Information concerning the
immediate availability of an immigrant visa may be obtained at any Service
Once 8 C.F.R. § 245.1(g)(1) is amended to allow adjustment applications to be
filed under INA § 245(a)(3), we propose similar amendments in the Department of
State’s Foreign Affairs Manual to even the playing field for beneficiaries of
approved I-140 and I-130 petitions who are outside the U.S. so as not to give
those here who are eligible for adjustment of status an unfair advantage. Since
the visa will not be valid when issued in the absence of a current priority
date, it will be necessary for USCIS to parole such visa applicants in to the
United States. The authors suggest the insertion of the following sentence,
shown here in bold and deletion of another sentence, in 9 Foreign Affairs
Manual (FAM) 42.55 PN 1.1, as follows:
“Qualifying dates” are established by the Department to ensure that applicants
will not be officially informed of requisite supporting documentation
requirements prematurely, i.e., prior to the time that the availability of a
visa number within a reasonable period can be foreseen. Therefore, post or
National Visa Center (NVC) will not officially and proactively notify
applicants of additional processing requirements unless the qualifying date set
by the Department (CA/VO/F/I) encompasses the alien’s priority date. Otherwise,
it is likely that some documents would be out-of date by the time a visa number
is available and delay in final action would result. An immigrant visa is
also considered available for provisional submission of the immigrant visa
application on Form DS 230 based on a provisional priority date without
reference to current priority date. No provisional submission can be undertaken
absent prior approval of the visa petition and only if visas in the preference
category have not been exhausted in the fiscal year. Issuance of the immigrant
visa for the appropriate category only occurs when there is a current priority
date. Nevertheless, should an applicant or agent request information
concerning additional processing requirements, this information may be provided
at any time with a warning that some documents may expire if obtained too early
We believe our proposal would not be creating new visa categories, but
simply allowing those who are already on the pathway to permanent residence,
but hindered by the crushing priority date backlogs, to apply for adjustment of
status or be paroled into the U.S. Another proposal is to allow the beneficiary of an approved I-140 to
remain in the United States, and grant him or her an employment authorization
document (EAD) if working in the same or similar occupation. While such a proposal
allows one to avoid redefining visa availability in order to file an I-485
application, as we have suggested, we do not believe that a stand- alone I-140
petition can allow for portability under INA §204(j). Portability can only be
exercised if there is an accompanying I-485 application. Still, at the same
time, the government has authority to grant open market EADs to any category of
aliens pursuant to INA §274A(h)(3). Under the broad authority that the
government has to issue EADs pursuant to §274A(h)(3), the validity of the
underlying labor certification would no longer be relevant.
Our colleague David
Isaacson suggests a blunter approach, which would avoid any regulatory
amendments. The
Department of State could similarly allow filing of adjustment applications by
applicants with priority dates for which no visa number was realistically
available, at any time it chose to do so, simply by declaring the relevant
categories “current” in the Visa Bulletin as it did for July 2007. The most
efficient time to do this would be in September, at the end of each fiscal
year, when the measure could also be justified as a way to ensure that any
remaining visa numbers for that fiscal year did not go unused. The Visa
Bulletin cut-off dates for the rest of the fiscal year could theoretically then
proceed normally, with dates for each October following naturally from whatever the dates had been in the August two
we also urge serious consideration of
our other proposal for not counting derivatives as a way to relieve the
pressure in the EB and FB backlogs, and refer you to our blog entitled, Two
– Not Counting Family Members And Parole In Place, http://blog.cyrusmehta.com/2014/06/two-aces-up-president-obamas-sleeve-to_29.html.
The fundamental point is that priority dates
should be a way of controlling not preventing permanent migration to the United
States. The very notion of a priority
date suggests a realistic possibility of acquiring lawful permanent resident status.
That is no longer the case for many immigrants in waiting. For this reason,
since Congress will not act, the President must step forward. Now is the time.
July 2007 Visa Bulletin,
Tyranny of Priority Dates,
The lyrics of the Talking Heads song “Burning Down the House” do not mention whether the house in question was involved in commerce. According to Jones v. United States, 529 U.S. 848 (2000), however, arson of “an owner-occupied residence not used for any commercial purpose” does not qualify as a violation of 18 U.S.C. §844(i), which makes it a crime to “maliciously damage[] or destroy[] . . . by means of fire or an explosive, any building, vehicle, or other real or personal property used in interstate or foreign commerce.” Under INA §101(a)(43)(E)(i), 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(43)(E)(i), a conviction for an offense “described in” 18 U.S.C. §844(i) is an aggravated felony for immigration purposes. The Courts of Appeals for the Second and Third Circuits have recently come to differing conclusions regarding whether an arson conviction under a state law that does not require such involvement in commerce, and thus would cover burning down a house, qualifies as such an aggravated felony. In Bautista v. Attorney General, 744 F.3d 54 (3d Cir. 2014), the Third Circuit, whose jurisdiction includes New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, ruled that conviction for attempted arson under New York State law lacking such a commerce requirement “cannot qualify as an aggravated felony because it lacks the jurisdictional element of § 844(i), which the Supreme Court has found to be a critical and substantive element of that arson offense.” Bautista, slip op. at 1-2. Robert Bautista, a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 1984, had been convicted of attempted arson in the third degree under N.Y. Penal Law §110 and 150.10, and sentenced to five years of probation (and had also been convicted of uttering a forged instrument under New Jersey law, for which he was sentenced to one year of probation). After being placed in removal proceedings upon his return from a trip abroad, he applied for cancellation of removal for permanent residents under INA 240A(a), 8 U.S.C. §1229b(a), but his application was pretermitted by the Immigration Judge on the ground that the attempted arson conviction was an aggravated felony. The BIA agreed with this finding in a precedential decision, Matter of Bautista, 25 I&N Dec. 616 (BIA 2011), but the Third Circuit disagreed and vacated that decision.
Bautista, 744 F.3d at 60, slip op. at 12. The Government argued that the jurisdictional element of §844(i) should not count for purposes of the aggravated felony analysis because it was not “substantive”. The Third Circuit, however, held (in a 2-1 split panel decision) that this element, like the other elements of §844(i), must be present in order for a conviction to qualify under the categorical approach as “described in” §844(i) for purposes of the aggravated felony designation of §101(a)(43)(E)(i). If Congress had wanted to include all generic arson as an aggravated felony, the Third Circuit reasoned, Congress could simply have referenced arson as a generic offense in the statute. Referencing the federal statute instead evinced a deliberate choice to require the jurisdictional element. As the majority wrote:
Bautista v. Attorney General,
In Symantec Corporation, 2011-PER-01856 (Feb. 11, 2014) the question was raised again. In this case, the employer filed an ETA Form 9089 for the position of “Financial Programmer Analyst.” The application was audited and the employer timely responded to the audit. The CO then denied the application because the employer’s advertisement placed on a job search website, as one of the three additional forms of recruitment required for professional occupations, contained a travel requirement not included in the ETA Form 9089 in violation of 656.17(f)(6) in that it contained job requirements or duties which exceeded the job requirements or duties listed on the ETA Form 9089. The employer filed a request for reconsideration and argued that the requirements of 656.17(f), upon which the CO relied in issuing the denial, are limited to advertisements placed in newspapers and professional journals, and do not apply to additional recruitment steps found in section 656.17(e)(1)(ii). The employer also cited the Preamble to the regulations, which states that the additional recruitment steps need only advertise the occupation involved in the application, and not the specific job opportunity. The employer also argued that its website advertisement was for multiple positions and the travel requirement expressed by the phrase “may be required to be available at various, unanticipated sites throughout the United States” did not create a travel requirement for all of the multiple open positions listed in the advertisement. The employer stressed that the use of the term “may” indicated that travel “might or might not be part of the job.” The CO denied the employer’s request for reconsideration and forwarded the case to BALCA arguing that US workers could consider the phrase travel “may be required” to be a term and condition of employment which could have deterred them from applying for the position. A BALCA panel of three administrative law judges decided the case. They acknowledged Credit Suisse but noted that it was not an en banc decision and that BALCA, while it recognized, from a policy standpoint, that applying the content requirements to additional recruitment steps would further ensure that the job opportunity is open and available to US workers, does not have the authority to read into the regulations an additional requirement not stated therein. BALCA reversed the CO’s denial of the ETA Form 9089 and held that based on the plain language of the regulations and the regulatory history, the advertising content requirements of 656.17(f) do not apply to the additional recruitment steps. Unwilling to accept this, the CO petitioned for en banc review arguing that the panel’s holding conflicted with BALCA precedent and that en banc review was necessary to maintain uniformity in the Board’s decisions. BALCA granted the CO’s petition, vacated the panel’s decision, ordered a rehearing en banc, and permitted the parties to file supplemental briefs. BALCA en banc considered the specific question of whether advertisements placed to fulfill the additional recruitment steps must also comply with the detailed content requirements listed in 656.17(f).
For PERM practitioners, what is the practical take away lesson from Symantec? Does the fact that 656.17(f) does not apply to the additional forms of recruitment mean that these additional forms of recruitment can indeed contain job requirements or duties which exceed the job requirements or duties listed on the ETA Form 9089? Can the three additional forms of recruitment contain requirements that are more restrictive than the minimum requirements listed on the ETA Form 9089? In footnote No. 4 to its decision in Symantec BALCA en banc mentioned that the CO, in his argument, relied on East Tennessee State University, 2010-PER-38 (Apr. 18, 2011) (en banc) where the Board concluded that an advertisement placed in fulfillment of an additional recruitment step must not include requirements not listed on the Form 9089, and stated that this conclusion is not binding upon the Symantec en banc Board as the issue was not raised or briefed by the parties, or necessary to the resolution of the appeal, and the Board did not analyze the scope of 656.17(f) in any depth. This could be seen as somewhat confusing to PERM practitioners. How can BALCA hold that 656.17(f) does not apply to the additional recruitment steps but then fail to address the East Tennessee en banc decision stating that the additional recruitment steps must abide by 656.17(e)? Which en banc decision governs? I think that PERM practitioners ought not to read too much into Symantec’s footnote No. 4. The en banc panel in Symantec points out that recruitment must be conducted in good faith and that the Board believed that the employer had indeed done this. The Board paid much attention to the fact that the employer’s additional recruitment was for multiple positions with varying requirements and that the employer had indicated the word “may” at the start of each sentence thereby indicating that not all of the requirements applied to each of the multiple positions. The Board stated that the CO does not have to certify an application if he has reason to believe that the employer’s recruitment efforts were not sufficient to warrant certification and the CO may instead exercise his broad discretion to order supervised recruitment under 20 C.F.R. §656.21. Accordingly, pursuant to the en banc decision in Symantec, while the three additional forms of recruitment do not have to comply with 656.17(f) and may be significantly broader or perhaps substantially briefer than the mandatory advertisements and the Notice of Filing, there nevertheless cannot be any information listed on these additional advertisements that is not included on the ETA Form 9089 as this would indicate bad faith on the part of the employer and possibly trigger supervised recruitment.
20 CFR 656.17(f),
Additional Recruitment Steps,
Matter of Credit Suisse Securities,
Matter of Symantec Corporation,