The Department of Homeland Security (”DHS”) issued a modification of its originally proposed No Match Letter Rules, which purport to provide employers guidelines on how they will have to deal with No Match Letter notifications from the Social Security Administration. Stay tuned on this as the rule will need to be approved by the Federal District Court for Northern District of California, which stayed implementation of the original rule last Summer.  The upshot of the proposed regulations is to create safe harbor rules on how employers should handle no match letter notifications. Employers who fail to follow the regulations would be presumed to possess knowledge that the employee(s) in question are not authorized to work.  Coming at a time when employers are already under significant economic pressure, the proposed rules will probably make matters worse.  For  readers, we provide a link below to DHS’s recent notice on the proposed supplementary rules.    

DHS Supplementary Rule Regarding No Match Letters

One of the big benefits of the North American Free Trade Act immigration-wise has been to allow Mexican and Canadian professionals to enter the U.S. to work for one year without having to apply for H-1B (specialty occupation) status. Because of the extremely limited number of H-1B visas made available each fiscal year, TN status has been a wonderful way around the problem because there is no quota on the number of TN’s that can enter the U.S. and no timing restrictions. The big drawback, however, has been that TNs could only stay in the U.S. for a year before having to extend their status and then were restricted to a one year extension. No longer. A new rule was published this past week allowing TNs to stay in the U.S. for up to three years and extend their status for up to another three years (comparable to the duration period for H-1B status holders). The authorities hope that this increase in the time allowed TNs to work in the U.S. will encourage employers to employ more TNs and thereby take some of the pressure off the H-1B quota. We shall see if it works, but however which way one looks at this, this is a positive development. We provide below additional information and a helpful Q&A on the new rule:   

 Notice of Extension of Treaty National Benefits

The Reuniting Families Act introduced by U.S. Senator Menendez purports to ease restrictions on the immigration of family members by broadening the definition of “immediate relative,” increasing per country limits, and making more available to aliens  waivers of inadmissibility in hardship situations. For readers, we present a brief summary of the proposed legislation which was posted today on the website of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association.   

Summary of Reuniting Families Act

In a previous USCIS notice it was announced that Temporary Protected Status for El Salvadorans has been extended through September 2010. In that notice, it was also advised that the TPS renewal period would begin and end 90 days from the formal publication of the notice in the Federal Register. For the benefit of readers, we provide the link below to the Federal Register notice published today and instructions describing the TPS renewal procedures. The renewal period runs from October 1, 2008 through December 30, 2008. Qualified candidates for TPS extensions should file a renewal of their status as soon as possible plus file a new application for work authorization. To reiterate USCIS’s caution: Approval of a TPS renewal will not mean an automatic extension of employment authorization. Work authorization can be obtained only by way of filing form I-765, with the requisite fee. We encourage the reader to review the Federal Register link below for further details.

Federal Register TPS Notice