Dear Readers: 

For the second week in a row, the Department of Homeland Security dropped a major final regulation on us. Last week, we got the new rule mandating the use of E-Verify for all federal contractors. This week we received the long-awaited R-1 religious worker regulation (with a few changes as well to the religious worker green card category). We’ve summarized both rules and include them in this issue.  

The Federal contractor E-Verify policy was first unveiled in August 2007 as part of President Bush’s “tough love” initiative introduced. Once the immigration reform efforts of 2007 failed to pass in Congress, the White House unveiled a series of enforcement measures designed to crack down on employers hiring illegal immigrants. The White House was basically sending a message to the employer community that their failure to get adequately engaged and push back against anti-immigrants was a big reason for the failure. And only after employers really felt the pain of inaction would they finally be stirred to action. 

The new rule will require a large portion of federal contractors to sign up for E-Verify and millions of workers will now be run through the new electronic verification system. If the Social Security No-Match rule is finally released by the court, the E-Verify and no-match rules could be a one-two punch that could seriously impact immigration enforcement.  

The R-1 rule comes in the wake of several years of criticism from various circles that the religious worker program is rife with fraud. Many would dispute whether the facts actually bear this out. Nevertheless, USCIS has issued a regulation that they began working on a few years back. The rule adds several new layers of complexity to the R-1 cases. First, all cases must now be pre-approved by USCIS and direct filing at consulates is barred. Second, all petitioning employers are subject to inspection before the R-1 may be approved. Third, employers must now supply a special letter from the IRS verifying their tax exempt status. Fourth, employers must now supply a lot more information about their economic and employment situation as part of the R-1 petition.  All of these requirements and several other new ones are explained in this week’s article. 

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This week is Thanksgiving and we wish all of our readers a happy holiday. It is, after all, the immigration holiday in America where we celebrate that we are in such a welcoming and abundant country.  

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Finally, as always, we welcome your feedback. If you are interested in becoming a Siskind Susser client, please call our office at 901-682-6455 and request a consultation. We are a national immigration law firm and work on a broad range of immigration matters. 

Kind regards,