15 June 2018

Managing Partner and Head of the US Practice Anastasia Tonello spoke with Bloomberg Law on the immigration ramifications of the Trump administration’s ‘buy American, hire American’ Executive Order. Since the issuance of the Executive Order Anastasia has noticed a 45% increase in ‘requests for evidence’ with H-1B cases and a notable drop in the approval rate for both H-1B visas and EB-1 green card applications for immigrants with extraordinary ability.

Employers are also experiencing substantial delays as the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service has been instructed to use the same level of scrutiny with extension applications as with first-time applications. Anastasia points out that this removal of any deference to prior agency decision-making is further fuelling the surge in requests for evidence and refusals.

Read the full article here.