Barbara Chin

This Mintz immigration alert examines President Trump’s July 14 Executive Order and what it means for individuals holding Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) passports.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the numerous travel bans and “shelter in place” orders which have been recently announced, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it will extend certain filing deadlines by 60 days.

Anyone who works in legal or HR and handles work authorizations for their employees will agree that hiring foreign nationals or international transfers has become much more difficult under the current administration and its interpretation of President Trump’s Hire America/Buy America (BAHA) Policy, which he issued by Executive Order in April 2017. The latest statistics issued by USCIS confirm the difficulty of processing H-1B Petitions over the past three years.

This alert covers the USCIS announcement that it is resuming Premium Processing on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 for all H-1B petitions.

According to the State Department August Visa Bulletin, the Employment Based First Preference Category (EB-1) Final Action Dates for “Priority Workers” will retrogress for the month of August 2018.

It appears that the Republican controlled Congress and the Trump Administration cannot get anything done on the contentious issues of immigration.

This is a follow-up to the Supreme Court’s decision on June 26, 2017 which allowed the Trump Administration’s Travel Ban affecting nationals of six designated Muslim-majority countries to be partially implemented until its hearing on the merits in the fall.