HSPRD and the American Immigration Council (AIC), are acting as co-counsel in a lawsuit against U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) seeking more transparency in the annual H–1B visa lottery system. The lawsuit seeks information about the government’s administration of the H-1B lottery and alleges that USCIS has never been forthcoming in describing the selection process. HSPRD and AIC are filing the lawsuit based on USCIS’s failure to provide meaningful information in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The lawsuit is litigated by HSPRD attorneys Matthew Piers and Kate Schwartz.
Every year, US employers seeking highly skilled foreign professionals submit petitions to USCIS on the first business days of April for the limited pool of H-1B non-immigrant visa numbers that are available for the coming fiscal year. With an annual limit of 65,000 visas for new hires and 20,000 additional visas for professionals with a master’s or doctoral degree from a US university, employer demand for H-1B visas has exceeded the statutory cap for more than ten years. When the number of petitions filed exceeds the number allocated in the first five days of the filing period, USCIS conducts a lottery to determine which petitions will get adjudicated.
US employers, foreign nationals seeking H-1Bs, and immigration lawyers are keenly interested in how USCIS administers the lottery process and the lawsuit intends to let them see how the lottery system works from start to finish and learn whether system is operating fairly.
Please contact Matthew Piers at mpiers@hsprd.wpengine.com with any questions.
Check out the media coverage about the lawsuit here:
