Major H-1B Victory for the IT (and Consulting) Industry Against the USCIS - ITSERVE ALLIANCE, INC. Lawsuit

On 10 March 2020, a Washington DC Federal Court overturned the USCIS highly restrictive

standards applied to the consulting industry. This decision has a major positive impact on the IT

industry.

Judge Rosemary M. Collyer held that the USCIS must not administer justice through random

memoranda and must, if it wishes to change the regulations, do so through a formal process.  In

fact, the USCIS seems to have illegally targeted the IT industry (“special treatment”):

 

 

 “Congress designed the H-lB visa in 1990 to permit speedy processing and

temporary placement of foreign workers in specialty occupations as needed

by U.S. employers. CIS has selected H-1B visa petitions from IT

consulting businesses, which hire temporary foreign workers and place

most of them with third parties for assignments of less than three years, for

special treatment with the effect of dramatically slowing the processing of

such visa petitions and reducing the accessibility by U.S. employers to such

workers. These facts are not contested. The question is whether, in so

doing, CIS actions were consistent with law and/or required formal

rulemaking. The Court finds that CIS has exceeded the law and was

required to engage in formal rulemaking.”

 

 

The court held that:

1.

 

2.  CIS 2018 Policy Memorandum (PM-602-0157) is invalid.  This is the memo entitled "Contracts

and Itineraries Requirements for H-1B Petitions Involving Third-Party Worksites" requiring

employers to submit an itinerary for placements.

3.

 

1.

2.  The infamous Neufeld Memo of 2010 that created a new definition of employer-

employee relationship is invalid as against the plaintiffs (in effect, anyone who sues over this

requirement is likely to prevail). The regulations clearly state that the employer-employee

relationship can be demonstrated by many factors, including:

3.

 

“ ...that the employer "may hire, pay, fire,

supervise, or otherwise control the work of [the] employee." 8 C.F.R. §

214.2(h)(4)(ii). Therefore, an employer-employee relationship is

evidenced by some aspect of "control" which may be shown in various

ways, be it the ability to hire, to pay, to fire, to supervise, or to control

in another fashion. The use of "or" distinctly informs regulated employers

that a single listed factor can establish the requisite "control" to

demonstrate an employer-employee relationship. This formulation makes

evident that there are multiple ways to demonstrate employer control,

that is, by hiring or paying or firing or supervising or "otherwise" showing

control. In context,"otherwise" anticipates additional, not fewer, examples

of employer control.

 

 

In other words, the employers should not be required to prove their control.  Any

one or more of these factors are enough if the employer may: hire, pay, fire,

supervise, or otherwise control the work of [the] employee.

 

1.

2. If the USCIS wishes to grant H-1B approvals for periods less than 3 years (or

implicitly the periods requested by petitioners), it MUST articulate specific reasons for

the shorter duration.  The court noted:

“The statute requires that the petitioning employer only employ those who are qualified

in specialty occupations. Nothing in its definition requires specific and non-speculative

qualifying day-to-day assignments for the entire time requested in the petition. While an

H-1B visa holder who works in a single location in a specialty occupation is assumed by

CIS to receive qualifying daily assignments, CIS requires Plaintiffs to prove, by a

preponderance of the corroborated evidence, that the daily assignments of their H-1B visa

holders will be in their specialty occupation. This begs a rational explanation: very few, if

any, U.S. employer would be able to identify and prove daily assignments for the future

three years for professionals in specialty occupations. What the law requires, and

 

employers can demonstrate, is the nature of the specialty occupation and the individual

qualifications of foreign workers.”

3.

 

1.

2. There are indications in this decision that the Court is not buying the USCIS

restrictive definition of “specialty occupation.”  The USCIS is likely to lose many more

cases on this issue.

 

3.

Clearly, the USCIS had been running amok for too long and needed to be reigned in,

which the court has done in this laudable decision.

 

One golden take away from this case, other similar cases and from our own experience

with litigation against the government is: do NOT suffer injustice.  Take them to court.

Nonimmigrant Visas

Add new comment

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <p> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><style> <drupal-entity data-*>
If you want to be notified of a response to your comment, please provide your email address.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.