Short News

Awards Just a few days ago, the Pulitzer Price for outstanding work in journalism has been awarded in the US. The price for photography went to Alan Diaz, who took the photo of the Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez during the storming of the house in Miami. The Miami Herald as well, which published the entire story on www.miami.com/herald/special/news/elian, was awarded a price for its Breaking News report.

Breakdown of visa processing The US Department of Labor (dol.gov) has massive problems with the processing of the Labor Condition Application (LCA). For most work-based visa, the US Department of Labor must approve the foreign employees application. According to current law, this must happen within 7 days, via fax. Nevertheless, currently the department has an application backlog reaching back to February. The reasons for the breakdown are as follows, some of them almost funny:

1. The sensitive computer system recognized background noises during the fax transmission and due to a programmer's error sent back many applications as ‘rejected.'
2. The new form that has three instead of two pages, which led to an overload of the system, quite frequently the third page could not be sent.
3. The new computer system had difficulties recognizing the number "5." That led to mixing up of customers IDs and chaotic conditions.
4. To make matters worse, a great number of personnel had been exchanged, the new employees weren't sufficiently trained and couldn't handle things even without the breakdown of the computer system.

By the way, the Department of Labor receives about 2000 LCA applications every day.

H-1B Transfers An H-1B transfer (officially H-1B portability petition) occurs when an employee with the standard H-1B work visa wishes to switch employers. According to a new law the employee may already take his new position once the Department of Labor has approved the LCA, not only as soon as the visa is being transferred. Due to the above mentioned breakdown of the fax system, it is for now even enough to prove that the LCA application has been filed. In the past it was often rather difficult to transfer to a new employer because the visa was approved too late.

INS Premium Processing Similar to the H-1B visa applications at present, the INS is planning to make more money with other visa applications as well. There will be an express service for O Visas (persons with extraordinary skills) and L Visas (for persons who wish to start their own business in the US) starting this summer. For a fee of $1,000 (in addition to the usual $110) you can have approval or rejection within two weeks. However, it is very likely that the normal applications will take even longer to be processed than before. New staff is not going to be hired.

PS: We offer advice for all types of US visas. Just write us an email and tell us about your plans.

New INS Service Center The INS will open a fifth Service Center in the US. It is being built in Missouri at the moment. The Missouri Service Center will mostly process applications for family-based immigration, applications such as the 2.3 million applications that have been sent in as a consequence of the LIFE Act by now (we reported about this in previous newsletters). We will, of course, give you the address as soon as we have it.