Suit Will Target Visa Retraction
The American Immigration Lawyers Association will sue over the government’s withdrawn offer to consider permanent residency for skilled foreign workers with employer-sponsored visas.
The State Department dashed the workers’ hopes by retracting a three-week-old statement in its visa bulletin indicating that green cards were available for the workers. (See previous ABAJournal.com post.) The workers had rushed to file their applications and meet the requirements, which include medical tests, certified documents and being in the United States.
The legal action arm of the immigration lawyers group is preparing the class-action lawsuit, deputy director Crystal Williams told the New York Times.
Officials from Citizenship and Immigration Services told the newspaper that it had already approved 60,000 visa applications, and they were surprised by the bulletin. State Department officials said the announcement was intended to spur the agency to speed its processing so visas would not go unused, as they had in prior years.
