William A Stock

November 14, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

President Donald Trump's appointee to lead U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was confirmed by the Senate and was sworn in as director on Oct. 8. Within his first two weeks in office, the agency issued its first official policy memo under his leadership.

By William A. Stock

5 minute read

May 16, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

On Monday, news stories from New York City reported that agents of an immigration agency had appeared at a public school in Queens. Initial reports assumed that the agents were from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) component that apprehends and removes immigrants without status from the United States.

By William A. Stock

11 minute read

April 19, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

The H-1B visa, under which ­employers petition for foreign workers who hold at least a bachelor's degree, has been in the news this week. The largest percentage of H-1B visa holders are employed in technology fields, though workers in education, health care, finance, engineering and many other fields also obtain the visas. On Monday, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that they received approximately 199,000 petitions from employers seeking H-1B ­status on behalf of employees for Fiscal Year 2018. As the law makes only 85,000 new H-1B visas available each fiscal year, more than half of the employers and employees will be disappointed in their ability to keep jobs in the United States. While the cap was exceeded, the number of petitions this year was down almost 16 percent from last year's record of 236,000 petitions.

By William A. Stock

13 minute read

March 14, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

The continued growth of the economy, coupled with a lack of any meaningful business immigration reform, suggests that the perpetually oversubscribed H-1B quota will be exhausted for the next federal fiscal year (FY 2018) within the first days of the filing period, which begins April 3. At the same time, the current ­administration signaled during the campaign that it would be seeking reforms of the H-1B visa program, and since the election, several bills have been introduced to increase wage levels, give preference for H-1B visas to certain professionals, and to impose recruiting requirements on prospective H-1B employers. These changes are meant to lower demand for the H-1B visas, particularly among technology outsourcing companies that file significant numbers of H-1B petitions each year.

By William A. Stock

9 minute read

February 14, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

The Trump administration is not even a month old, and has already ­overwhelmed the news, social media and many private discussions. To cap off his first week in office, the president signed an executive order he called "Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States." Most of the attention to that order focused on the complete ban of entry to nationals of seven majority-Muslim countries, including refugees, Iraqi nationals who worked with the U.S. military, and even long-time green card holders.

By William A. Stock

11 minute read

January 17, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

In November 2014, President Barack Obama directed the Department of Homeland Security to undertake a set of administrative initiatives on immigration in the absence of congressional action on statutory immigration reform. The headline initiative was to try and protect the undocumented parents of U.S. citizen children from deportation, but several other directives were aimed at making the legal immigration system more responsive to highly skilled immigrants and entrepreneurs. In a flurry of activity as this administration comes to a close, a rule to allow "parole" of entrepreneurs into the United States was finalized, and the Department of Homeland Security issued a precedent decision setting a new standard for determining when highly skilled immigrants should be granted green cards "in the national interest."

By William A. Stock

10 minute read

December 22, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

One of the first policy battles the incoming administration will face with cities and states around the country, including Philadelphia, is the ­extent of federal power to conscript local law enforcement to assist with enforcing the civil immigration system. Since the election, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has repeated his commitment to insisting on appropriate limits of federal power within the city, causing opponents to label Philadelphia a "Sanctuary City."

By William A. Stock

9 minute read

December 21, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

One of the first policy battles the incoming administration will face with cities and states around the country, including Philadelphia, is the ­extent of federal power to conscript local law enforcement to assist with enforcing the civil immigration system. Since the election, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has repeated his commitment to insisting on appropriate limits of federal power within the city, causing opponents to label Philadelphia a "Sanctuary City."

By William A. Stock

9 minute read

November 15, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

Donald Trump is now the president-elect of the United States, and faces the daunting task of assembling a Cabinet, creating a White House staff for himself, and filling over 4,000 other politically appointed positions within the federal government.

By William A. Stock

12 minute read

October 18, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

Immediately after his inauguration in January 2016, Mayor Jim Kenney issued an executive order instructing Philadelphia law enforcement to refuse to detain individuals at the request of ­immigration authorities. This policy, and others like it around the country, has been misleadingly called a "sanctuary city" policy by those who oppose it, and the city's policy has become a major talking point in the current Pennsylvania Senate race.

By William A. Stock

10 minute read