DeadlineTwo hundred days ago President Obama stoked the hopes of immigration advocates with his announcement of wide-ranging executive actions to try — as far as his authority would carry him — to change America’s broken immigration system for the better.

Generating most of the media fanfare and Republican outrage were his plans to expand eligibility for the DACA program and create a new DAPA program for the undocumented parents of citizens and green card holders. Expanded DACA and the new DAPA programs now seem dead on arrival unless the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court lifts an injunction by a federal judge in Texas.  Time will tell whether the President has developed (as the New York Times editors urge) a Plan C, which may or may not end the detention of immigrant families and children, or lead to the publication of proposed regulations allowing notice and comment on expanded DACA and the new DAPA programs, as the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law has proposed.

On the legal immigration front, last November the President also offered hope, and he promised change  — but so far hopes have been dashed, and the only change observed has been of the chump variety. What has become of his November 21, 2014 Presidential Memorandum (“Modernizing and Streamlining the U.S. Immigrant Visa System for the 21st Century“) which instructed the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State to report back to him by March 15, 2015 on recommendations to improve the legal immigration system?  So far, certainly not the publication of the required report, and beyond that almost nothing else.

Immigration stakeholders heard the President proclaim at the March 23, 2015 SelectUSA Investment Summit that the new L-1B guidance memo on specialized knowledge would “[allow] corporations to temporarily move workers from a foreign office to a U.S. office in a faster, simpler way [that] could benefit hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant workers and their employers.” Yet the L-1B guidance — long in gestation and butt ugly at birth — will only provide bureaucrats with more grounds to issue burdensome requests for evidence and ultimately say “no” in additional ways.

More inflated Obama Administration rhetoric spewed forth on April 15, 2015.   That’s when the State Department’s Catherine A. Novelli, Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, at a conference on “Deepening the U.S.-India Commercial Partnership” — with tongue firmly in cheek — proclaimed:

Indian companies are world class and strong, and do not need government protection from outside competition. . . . Indian-owned companies have invested over $11 billion in the U.S. and employ over 44,000 people here. These Indian companies have proven their ability to thrive in the United States, one of the most competitive markets in the world. . . .

The United States and India each have strong comparative advantages that become stronger when we work together. The United States and India have shared values and a shared commitment to democracy. Together, we are partners in upholding an international, rules-based order that ensures global peace, security, and prosperity. We want to seize this moment and bring to fruition the unrealized potential that still exists between our economies, for the betterment of the lives of both our citizens.

Since her speech, proponents of employment-based immigration reforms have seen what the Obama Administration apparently means when it proposes to uphold “an international, rules-based order that ensures global . . . prosperity.” The actions of the Administration’s immigration bureaucrats have recently offered their version of “rules-based” order — actions which hurt U.S. and Indian companies alike, to wit:

  • The release of the poorly reasoned precedent decision, Matter of Simeio Solutions, LLC, 26 I&N Dec. 542 (AAO, Apr. 9, 2015), which witnessed the USCIS Administrative Appeals Office’s foray into foreign turf, viz., the Labor Department’s H-1B regulations, to require that employers file amended petitions with USCIS each time an H-1B worker moves to a worksite located in a different metropolitan area. The AAO took this action even though it acknowledged that prior USCIS guidance distributed widely through an immigration stakeholder association expressly stated that no new filings would be necessary.
  • The USCIS pronouncement on May 21, transformed into a draft on May 27, that Simeio Solutions would be applied retroactively, even though precedent decisions by regulation, 8 CFR § 103.3(c)(“Service precedent decisions”), provide “for publication as precedent in future proceedings . . . (emphasis added).”  With these May 21-May 27 actions, USCIS offered to grant an amnesty against the taking of “adverse action” against H-1B employers and workers for prior worksite changes, as long as amended petitions are filed by August 19, even though USCIS has not stated how far back in time its retroactive application of Simeio Solutions would go — an announcement sure to upend the summer vacation plans of company HR personnel and their immigration counsel.
  • On the heels of its retroactive application of Simeio Solutions, USCIS in a further surprise announced the suspension on May 26 of expedited adjudication of H-1B petitions under the USCIS Premium Processing Service purportedly because of the wholly foreseeable increase in applications for H-4 spousal work permits — a workflow the agency had been planning since May, 2014.
  • The AAO’s recent release under the Freedom of Information Act of a 41-page non-precedent decision holding on a variety of newly articulated but nonetheless spurious theories that the position of management analyst is not an H-1B specialty occupation and the proposed H-1B beneficiary is not qualified serve in the proffered position. Immigration observers ask why the AAO would take 41 pages to deny H-1B eligibility in a non-precedent case. The probable answer is that it wanted to float new grounds for USCIS adjudicators to use as a script, much like the non-precedent 2008 L-1B GST case, with which to deny ever more H-1B petitions.
  • The failure of the USCIS EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Office (IPO) over several months, despite repeated requests, to offer clarifying guidance on whether and under what circumstances the redeployment of EB-5 investor capital may be allowed under the regional center program where projects have long ago been completed, the requisite jobs have been created, but investor petitions seeking removal of conditions on residency cannot be filed or approved because immigrant visa retrogression affecting huge numbers of Mainland-China born investors delayed the initial grant of conditional residency.  Equally or perhaps even more egregious is the IPO’s reversal of prior interpretations and its current interpretation that when a prospective EB-5 investor takes out a loan and uses those funds as a cash investment into an EB-5 project is treated a prohibited contribution of debt rather than an investment of capital.  Apparently, cash is king in the investment world, except in the never-never-land of USCIS’s EB-5 IPO.

Meantime, as President Obama makes plans for his presidential library, he apparently seems focused not at all, or to put it charitably, not enough, on the passive-aggressive actions of immigration bureaucrats who seem to be playing out the clock in the apparent hope that his presidency will end before these laudable initiatives ever are allowed to occur:

Modernize, improve and clarify immigrant and nonimmigrant visa programs to grow our economy and create jobs
Who
  • U.S. businesses, foreign investors, researchers, inventors and skilled foreign workers.
What USCIS will:

  • Work with the Department of State to develop a method to allocate immigrant visas to ensure that all immigrant visas authorized by Congress are issued to eligible individuals when there is sufficient demand for such visas.
  • Work with the Department of State to modify the Visa Bulletin system to more simply and reliably make determinations of visa availability.
  • Provide clarity on adjustment portability to remove unnecessary restrictions on natural career progression and general job mobility to provide relief to workers facing lengthy adjustment delays.
  • Clarify the standard by which a national interest waiver may be granted to foreign inventors, researchers and founders of start-up enterprises to benefit the U.S economy.
  • Authorize parole, on a case-by-case basis, to eligible inventors, researchers and founders of start-up enterprises who may not yet qualify for a national interest waiver, but who:
    • Have been awarded substantial U.S. investor financing; or
    • Otherwise hold the promise of innovation and job creation through the development of new technologies or the pursuit of cutting-edge research.
  • Work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to develop regulations for notice and comment to expand and extend the use of optional practical training (OPT) for foreign students, consistent with existing law.
When
  • Upon issuing necessary guidance and regulations.