Archive for March, 2010
Monday, March 15th, 2010
Stewart Rabinowitz, of the Dallas-based law firm Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, weighs in on the Kerry-Lugar Visa Bill.
On February 24, 2010, U.S. Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) introduced bipartisan legislation to drive job creation and increase America’s global competitiveness by helping immigrant entrepreneurs secure visas to the United States.
The StartUp Visa Act of 2010 will allow an immigrant entrepreneur to receive a two year visa if he or she can show that a qualified U.S. investor is willing to dedicate a significant sum – a minimum of $250,000 – to the immigrant’s startup venture.
“The Kerry-Lugar bill represents an opportunity for both foreign investors and the U.S. economy to benefit from the energy, ideas, and capital of foreign nationals,” asserts Stewart Rabinowitz, of the Dallas-based law firm Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz.
Rabinowitz is especially intrigued by the source and amount of the investment. “By lowering the actual initial investment amount to $250,000 and shifting the source of funds to a U.S. investor for this new entrepreneurial visa, and similarly lowering the created U.S. workplace expansion to five persons – an underutilized visa category can offer a real benefit to further help kick start the U.S. economy,” Rabinowitz explains, “Because the investment must either attract additional investment totaling $1 million or generate revenue of $1 million to successfully grant a long-term U.S. immigration benefit, the program represents a welcome sign from America to the best and brightest entrepreneurial minds worldwide: Come up with great ideas and plans to implement them; we will come up with the money.”
The Startup Visa Act of 2010 would amend immigration law to create a new EB-6 category for immigrant entrepreneurs, drawing from existing visas under the EB-5 category, which permits foreign nationals who invest at least $1million into the U.S., and thereby create ten jobs, to obtain a green card. After proving that he or she has secured initial investment capital, and if, after two years, the immigrant entrepreneur can show that he or she has generated at least five full-time jobs in the United States, attracted $1 million in additional investment capital or achieved $1 million in revenue, and then he or she would receive permanent legal resident status.
Rabinowitz is optimistic about the bill. “This is a win-win for the U.S. and an opportunity for foreign nationals to bring their energy here to help America grow,” he says.
But he’s also pragmatic. “We will see how much traction the bill actually gets in the highly partisan Washington D.C. environment during a midterm election year with a lightning rod issue such as immigration, even with bipartisan support, being at stake,” Rabinowitz concludes.
Stewart Rabinowitz is President of Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, P.C., a Dallas based Immigration Law Firm (http: //www. rabinowitzrabinowitz.com). He is Board Certified in Immigration and Nationality Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
To learn more about Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, P.C., call 1.972.233.6200 or visit http://www.rabinowitzrabinowitz.com.
Tags: Dallas immigration, Dallas Immigration attorney, Dallas Immigration lawyer
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Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Stewart Rabinowitz, of the Dallas-based law firm Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, offers incisive commentary about the DHS commissioned report that revealed serious shortcomings in the E-Verify Program.
The Westat Report on E-Verify, commissioned by the DHS, revealed some serious shortcomings. Originally authorized as The Basic Pilot Program under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) to electronically verify the work authorization status of new hires of participating employers, the program now referred to as E-Verify is the federal electronic employment verification program available to employers to validate the lawful employment status of new hires.
To verify a newly hired employee, an E-Verify participating employer submits information from the Form I-9 over a secure Internet connection to be matched against government data. The information is first matched against Social Security Administration (SSA) data and then, for noncitizens and some naturalized citizens, against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data. If the worker attests to being a U.S. citizen and if everything between databases is in agreement, the worker is employment authorized. If information from the SSA database does not match the worker information entered, E-Verify instantly requests the employer to check for possible input errors and, if no changes are made, E-Verify issues a Tentative Nonconfirmation (TNC) finding. That’s how the process is supposed to work.
The Westat Report commissioned by the DHS revealed that E-Verify does not detect most identity fraud cases for workers who use information about real-employment-authorized persons. Asserts Stewart Rabinowitz, of the Dallas-based law firm Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, “A 54% error rate in approving workers who are actually unauthorized to work in the United States shows a serious flaw in the program whose goal is precisely to deny employment authorization to such workers.” Rabinowitz takes this observation to its logical conclusion. “Proponents of making E-Verify mandatory for all employers should not be comforted that E-Verify, as currently configured, will rid the workplace of unauthorized workers, nor is it ready for that task nationwide.”
Exacerbating matters, E-Verify can be misused. “Some employers succumb to temptation and use E-Verify to pre-screen workers before hiring, or take improper actions against workers who contest a Tentative Noncompliance (TNC) finding of employment eligibility,” Rabinowitz explains.
If wronged by an employer, workers seldom have a failsafe to mitigate such errors. “Aggrieved workers – some even U.S. citizens –who are told to go to the Social Security Administration (SSA) or a United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) office to contest an inaccurate non-work authorized finding then face a government agency that does not have a well-established quick procedure in place to meet the strict time limits provided such workers, frustrating the affected workers and their employers,” concludes Rabinowitz.
Stewart Rabinowitz is President of Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, P.C., a Dallas based Immigration Law Firm (http: //www. rabinowitzrabinowitz.com). He is Board Certified in Immigration and Nationality Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
To learn more about Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, P.C., call 1.972.233.6200 or visit http://www.rabinowitzrabinowitz.com.
Tags: Dallas immigration, Dallas Immigration attorney, Dallas Immigration lawyer
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The United States Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel within the agency’s Civil Rights Division offers tips to employers to avoid immigration-related unfair employment practices.
The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) for Immigration-related Unfair Employment Practices enforces the laws that prohibit discriminatory practices in the recruitment, hiring, employment eligibility verification (“Form I-9”) process or dismissal of persons authorized to work in the United States. To avoid such discriminatory practices, the office offers ten tips.
1. Treat all people the same when announcing a job, taking applications, interviewing, offering a job, verifying eligibility to work, hiring, and firing.
2. Examine and accept original documents that reasonably appear genuine and relate to the employee.
3. Do not demand different or additional documents as long as the documents presented prove identity and work authorization, are listed on the back of Form I-9, and appear genuine.
4. So long as the job applicants are authorized to work in the United States, avoid requiring job applicants to have a particular citizenship status, such as U.S. citizenship or permanent residence, unless mandated by law or federal contract.
5. Give out the same job information over the telephone to all callers, and use the same application form for all applicants.
6. Base all decisions about firing on job performance and/or behavior, not on the appearance, accent, name, or citizenship status of your employees.
7. Complete the I-9 form and keep it on file for at least three years from the date of employment or for one year after the employee leaves the job, whichever is later.
8. On the I-9 form, verify that you have seen documents establishing identity and work authorization for all your new employees – U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike – hired after November 6, 1986.
9. If reverification of employment eligibility becomes necessary, accept any valid documents your employee chooses to present – whether or not they are the same documents the employee provided initially.
10. Be aware that U.S. citizenship, or nationality, belongs not only to persons born within the fifty states, but may belong to persons born to a U.S. citizen outside the United States. Persons born in Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, or Swains Island also are U.S. Citizens or nationals. Finally, an immigrant may become a U.S. citizen by completing the naturalization process.
Stewart Rabinowitz is President of Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, P.C., a Dallas based Immigration Law Firm (http: //www. rabinowitzrabinowitz.com). He is Board Certified in Immigration and Nationality Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
Stewart Rabinowitz is President of Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz, P.C. Mr. Rabinowitz is Board Certified in Immigration and Nationality Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. To contact a Dallas immigration lawyer or Dallas immigration attorney visit Rabinowitzrabinowitz.com
