USCIS Issues Clarifying Guidance for Individuals Authorized to Work Under Special Student Relief Provisions

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is issuing policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to clarify the validity period of employment authorization for F-1 nonimmigrant students experiencing severe economic hardship due to emergent circumstances (also known as special student relief (SSR)) who are work authorized under the SSR provisions of 8 CFR.

The update clarifies that in cases of severe economic hardship due to emergent circumstances, we may grant offcampus SSR employment authorization to an F-1 nonimmigrant student for the duration of the Federal Register notice validity period. This employment authorization may not extend past the student’s academic program end date. This update notes that we may issue employment authorization documents for the duration of the Federal Register notice, which is typically an 18-month validity period, as permitted by the relevant SSR Federal Register notice.

Emergent circumstances are events that affect F-1 nonimmigrant students from a particular region and create severe economic hardship. These events may

USCIS Issues Clarifying Guidance on Eligibility for the O-1B Visa Classification

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today issued policy guidance clarifying how it evaluates evidence to determine eligibility for O-1B nonimmigrants of extraordinary ability in the arts and nonimmigrants of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture or television industry.

Policy updates include adding a chart in the appendix that describes examples of evidence that may satisfy the O-1B evidentiary criteria, as well as considerations relevant to evaluating such evidence. The chart also assists petitioners in submitting appropriate evidence that may establish the beneficiary’s eligibility.

include, but are not limited to, natural disasters, financial crises, and military conflicts.

This policy update will be effective when published and will apply to all pending and future applications for SSR employment authorization.l

The guidance also improves readability to help adjudicators with predictable and transparent application of the O-1B evidentiary requirements, in support of consistent decisions and improvements in efficiency.

This guidance, contained in Volume 2 of the Policy Manual, is effective immediately. The guidance contained in the Policy Manual is controlling and supersedes any related prior guidance on the topic.l

Pardon for Dreamers/ continued from page 1

Dreamers.

Obama refused, and under Trump every effort was made to eliminate Obama’s signature DACA program, which offered temporary protection for those undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children.

While courts at the time protected DACA, it’s now under siege again and will likely come before the Supreme Court for a third time. It has survived similar legal challenges twice before, but all bets are off with the current makeup of SCOTUS.

The editorial by El Magonista calls on President Biden to use his pardon for “Dreamers and other undocumented peoples living in the United States.”

“No other viable solutions have been suggested by any other immigration groups or elected officials – PERIOD,” the authors argue. “The time has come for Dreamers to stand up and demand President Biden issue a full pardon to all undocumented residents.”

It’s been 21 years since the first DREAM Act legislation was introduced in Congress. Dreamers have since become a powerful advocacy voice within the US immigration policy arena.

But some activists contend that a pardon will not regularize Dreamers’ status. They also question the legal force such a pardon would carry given that under current law being undocumented is a civil violation rather than an actual crime.

But there is a growing sense of desperation within the immigrant rights movement because, as El Magonista notes, “no one else has suggested anything but hollow, band-aid efforts to finally relieve the 11 million undocumented immigrants living, working and paying taxes in the U.S. right now.”

From day one the Biden administration promised comprehensive immigration reform, including protection for Dreamers. And while it has reversed many Trump-era administrative rules and regulations, it has since hardened its position on asylum and border issues in response to growing political pressure from the right coupled with the continued arrival of migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, among others.

Just last week the administration pro- posed a new rule on asylum requiring non-Mexican petitioners to first seek asylum in one of the countries they pass through before entering the US. The move united the typically fragmented immigrant rights movement in opposition to what they are calling the “Trump Ban 2”

While clearly designed to deflect conservative criticism of Biden as an “open border President,” the fact is that restrictionism has never been a winning strategy for Democrats, either in protecting them from Republican attacks on immigration or in winning votes from erstwhile supporters.

Obama is a perfect case in point. He deported more immigrants than almost any prior president, a fact that won him few if any Republican allies. He also created DACA, protecting some 600,000 Dreamers from deportation.

A decade later, even that protection now appears to be faltering, leaving the country – and millions of undocumented immigrants – mired in continued immigration policy paralysis.l

Pilar Marrero is the Associate Editor of Ethnic Media Services and has covered immigration for at least 20 years for La Opinion and other media. In 2012, she wrote the book Killing the American Dream, chronicling 25 years of immigration policy mishaps, and not much has changed since then.

USCIS to Start Collecting Fee for EB-5 Integrity Fund

The Department of Homeland Security posted a Federal Register notice providing information related to the EB-5 Integrity Fund. Starting Mar. 2, and each Oct. 1 thereafter, as required by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will collect an annual fee from each designated regional center to finance the EB-5 Integrity Fund.

Background

The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 established a special fund known as the “EB-5 Integrity Fund” in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. We will use the EB-5 Integrity Fund to administer the EB-5 Regional Center Program, and we may use the funds we collect to conduct investigations and detect and investigate fraud or other crimes.

Fee Information

The fee is $20,000 for regional centers with more than 20 investors and $10,000 for those with 20 or fewer investors. The first fee payment is due by Apr. 1, and regional centers must pay the annual fee online directly at Pay.gov, a system managed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. 31.l