Dear Readers:

I wanted to alert you all to a potentially serious development at the BCIS that could cause a drastic deterioration in the level of customer service at the agency. As many of you know, with the exception of the Missouri Service Center, information officers are available by telephone at the BCIS regional service centers in Texas, California, Nebraska and Vermont. It can sometimes take dozens of attempts and waits of several hours, but there is no choice but to speak to an information officer to resolve a problem with a case.

Now the BCIS is even planning on taking that most basic level of service away. Customers of the agency will now have to call a central 800 number and speak with officers who have no information on cases pending at the service centers. The person who fields that call will then forward the information to the service center handling the case and the customer will have to wait for a written response. Any seasoned immigration lawyer reading this is probably already bristling at this prospect. We're frequently told to fax inquiries to the service centers and we pretty much take for granted that we will NEVER get a response - in writing, by phone, or in any way. Let it be noted for the record that I predict that for most people, inquiries will seemingly go into a black hole. And for those lucky enough to get a response, they can expect to hear back in months and not days.

I know that there are many Congressional liaisons that receive this newsletter. You are about to be inundated on a permanent basis with calls from people who need help and are no longer able to resolve matters on their own. You might want to give a heads up to the members of Congress who employ you to warn them about what is coming. We hope you will urge them to let the BCIS know that changes like this that make the agency less accountable and less service-oriented are NOT acceptable.

Over the last several weeks we have run a series of articles on employment rules for F-1 students in the US. We are asked very frequently questions about student employment and so we decided that we would use our ABCs of Immigration feature to cover the subject at some length. A natural question that arises in connection with student work authorization is how to handle the tax obligations that come from working in the US. Not being tax experts ourselves, we asked our friend and frequent newsletter contributor Steven Weiser to help out. Steven is a gifted tax attorney/CPA and he has written this week's ABC’s article on this topic. We hope you find his in depth treatment of the subject helpful.

We also write this week on our regular features as well as the week's news. Included is a guest article by Jim Buck of BUNAC, the well-known work/travel exchange program regarding the hiring of J-1 visa holders as summer camp employees.

Finally, as always, we remind readers that we're lawyers who make our living representing immigration clients. We would love to discuss becoming your law firm. Just go to http://www.visalaw.com/intake.html to request an appointment or call us at 800-748-3819 or 901-682-6455.

Regards,

Greg Siskind