A federal judge has granted class certification in a lawsuit challenging the alleged pattern and practice of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services arbitrarily denying H-1B non-immigrant employment-based petitions for market research analyst positions filed by businesses in this country.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
The lawsuit — filed in federal court in the Northern District of California by the American Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, along with law firms Van Der Hout LLP, Joseph & Hall PC, and Kuck Baxter Immigration LLC — seeks to rein in the unlawful adjudication practice the US Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) uses in determining whether a market research analyst job qualifies as a “specialty occupation.”
