USA Green Card Immigration Blog

USCIS – USCIS Announces “Entrepreneurs in Residence” Initiative.

Agency focuses on fully realizing the job-creating potential of current immigration law

Released Oct. 11.2011

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas joined the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in Pittsburgh to announce “Entrepreneurs in Residence.”  This new innovative initiative will utilize industry expertise to strengthen USCIS policies and practices surrounding immigrant investors, entrepreneurs and workers with specialized skills, knowledge, or abilities. Mayorkas announced the initiative at the Jobs Council’s High Growth Entrepreneurship Listening and Action Session at AlphaLab in Pittsburgh before the Council’s quarterly meeting with President Obama.

“This initiative creates additional opportunities for USCIS to gain insights in areas critical to economic growth,” said Director Mayorkas. “The introduction of expert views from the private and public sector will help us to ensure that our policies and processes fully realize the immigration law’s potential to create and protect American jobs.”

USCIS will launch the “Entrepreneurs in Residence” initiative with a series of informational summits with industry leaders to gather high-level strategic input. Informed by the summits, the agency will stand up a tactical team comprised of entrepreneurs and experts, working with USCIS personnel, to design and implement effective solutions. This initiative will strengthen USCIS’s collaboration with industries, at the policy, training, and officer level, while complying with all current Federal statutes and regulations.

The initiative builds upon USCIS’s August announcement of efforts to promote startup enterprises and spur job creation, including enhancements to the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. Since August, USCIS is:

• Conducting a review of the EB-5 process
• Working with business analysts to enhance the EB-5 adjudication process
• Implementing direct access for EB-5 Regional Center applicants to reach adjudicators quickly; and
• Launching new specialized training modules for USCIS officers on the EB-2 visa classification and L-1B nonimmigrant intra-company transferees.

For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit www.uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), YouTube (/uscis) and the USCIS blog The Beacon.

U.S. Sees Fewer Visa Lottery Applicants – WSJ.com.

Only eight million people tried to win a green card in the latest U.S. diversity-visa lottery, the State Department said, compared with a record 15 million last year.

That figure could slide further in coming years, because the Senate recently passed a measure to charge a fee for entering the electronic draw, starting with next year’s drawing.

A State Department spokeswoman attributed the drop in entries this year to the fact that Bangladeshis—for many years the most numerous applicants—weren’t eligible to participate. The South Asian nation is no longer classified as a low-immigration country to the U.S.

The diversity-visa lottery is an immigration program that offers a quick path to permanent U.S. residence for 50,000 people each year who are selected randomly by the U.S. government from countries that send few immigrants to the U.S. Earlier this year, a computer glitch forced the government to redo the previous lottery, after 22,000 people were incorrectly notified that they had won.

During the monthlong entry period every fall, the green-card lottery generates a frenzy in countries across Africa, the source of most entries now.

This year, the three countries that submitted the most entries were Nigeria, with 1.36 million; Ghana, with 909,000; and Ukraine, with 853,000. Last year, Bangladesh accounted for 7.6 million entries.

Last month, Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) won approval for a bill to extend federal benefits to disabled refugees living within the U.S. The bill included a new $30 fee to enter the diversity-visa lottery. The House is expected to pass the same measure.

A spokesman for Mr. Schumer said the fee would help offset the cost of the program and avoid adding to the U.S. budget deficit. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated it would cost about $36 million to provide a one-year extension to the program for refugees.

The results of this year’s diversity-visa draw will be announced in May.