Greenspoon Marder Immigration Alert: New Developments December 2, 2020

Immigration Blog Dec 2, 2020

Breaking News: District Court Block Enforcement of DHS and DOL Rules

On Tuesday, December 1, 2020, a federal district court in California has blocked the enforcement of two new immigration regulations from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Labor (DOL), holding that these regulations violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) as it failed to go through the normal rulemaking process.

The DHS and DOL rules were published on October 8th, with the government issuing these rules as “interim regulations” and invoking the APA’s “good cause exception”. The DOL rule restructured the prevailing wage system for H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3 nonimmigrant cases and the PERM program. The restructuring, with only 48 hours notice, resulted in significantly higher prevailing wage minimums for these visa categories and for the Perm labor certification process. The DHS rule, which was set to take effect on December 7, introduced stricter eligibility criteria for H-1B specialty occupations, placed new restrictions on the placement of H-1B workers at third-party worksites including limiting the validity period to one (1) year and reinstated various other policies that were invalidated earlier in the year.

This ruling immediately invalidates these rules but it is expected that the Administration will appeal the decision.

At this time, it unknown how DOL will respond to the ruling. We continue to review the ruling and all agency announcements regarding the court order and will post updates accordingly.

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Greenspoon Marder Immigration Alert: New Developments December 2, 2020

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