Communique – Volume 15, Number 1

January 2019

Happy New Year from the ISSO!

In this issue:

U.S. Government Shutdown and Immigration Processing

Since the U.S. government is currently shut-down due to the lapse in annual appropriated funding for the U.S. government, we wanted to provide a summary of how immigration related agencies and services are affected. Fortunately, most immigration-related services and agencies are fee-based and remain open during the shut-down.

Here is a summary related to the effects of the current shut-down on immigration-related services:

  • U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: The shut-down does not affect USCIS’s fee-funded activities including petitions and benefit requests at USCIS service centers. Therefore, USCIS continues to adjudicate H-1B petitions, Optional Practical Training requests or other change of status applications. While there are a handful of USCIS operations that are suspended, these are not related to non-immigrant petitions filed by the ISSO.
  • U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP): Inspection and law enforcement personnel are considered “essential.” Thus airports and other U.S. ports of entry are open.
  • U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): The ICE Student and J-1 Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) offices are unaffected since SEVP is funded by fees.
  • U.S. Department of Labor (DOL): The DOL will also not be impacted by the government shutdown as President Trump signed a minibus appropriations bill funding DOL through the end of September 30, 2019.
  • U.S. Department of State (DOS): Consular operations abroad remain operational “as long as there are sufficient fees to support the operations.” Thus, if operating status and/or funding do become an issue for consulates abroad, visa operations may be affected as generally consulates will only handle diplomatic visas and “life or death” emergencies in these cases.
  • Social Security Administration (SSA): The SSA is not currently accepting applications for new social security numbers (SSN). New employees who will need to apply for an SSN should therefore plan to apply as soon as possible after the SSA starts accepting applications. Employment verification (Form I-9) at the ISSO will not be affected by this shutdown.

While most services that affect our foreign national employees remain open, we are hearing reports that certain government systems are not operating as normal either due to technical issues, lack of technical support or other reasons. The ISSO is monitoring this closely and will communicate potential issues as appropriate. In the meantime, please feel free to contact your ISSO advisor if you have any questions.

Reminders for Hiring Temporary or Part-Time Employees

The majority of new temporary or part-time foreign national employees are on-boarded to their BU employment without incident. However, each year, we are presented with a few prospective employees who could not ultimately prove they were eligible for the desired BU appointment. Since most of these positions are not eligible for BU sponsorship, the prospective employees typically present employment authorization that has been obtained independently. However, since there are occasionally issues with presented documents for temporary or part-time hires, please note the following as it may alleviate potential issues for moving forward with the employment:

  • Restrictions in employment authorizations: Many immigration classifications that allow for employment/affiliations in the U.S. are restrictive and employer specific. For example, the H-1B, O-1, TN classifications are limited to the terms requested in the petition to USCIS by the sponsoring employer. In addition, individuals with authorization to work under the F-1 Optional Practical Training (OPT) authorization must be employed in a position that is directly related to the degree they received. Therefore, please note that just because a prospective employee is in the U.S. in some capacity, it does not necessarily mean that they can be employed at BU. The ISSO cannot verify employment for prospective employees who do not present verification that they have authorization that specifically allows for the employment at BU.
  • Independent work authorizations are date specific: We recommend that departments confirm both the start and end dates on the authorization to insure that any prospective hires can both commence employment at BU and continue their employment at BU for the planned duration of employment. While it is great that the individual may be able to work right away, it can certainly present a problem if the individual needs to be terminated soon after because they cannot present documentation to verify continued employment eligibility.

In many of these cases, the ISSO had no prior knowledge of these hires until they came to us to complete the I-9 employment verification and check-in process. Thus, we ask that you bring us into the loop in advance for all hires. When we have details in advance, we can help you make more informed decision in hiring and prevent last minute surprises. Please contact your ISSO advisor with any questions.

2019 Faculty Hiring Season and ISSO Processing Timelines

January is the time to start thinking about your spring and summer 2019 faculty hires! This is more important than ever to insure that your new faculty member will be able to commence his or her BU employment as desired. We continue to experience processing slowdowns at all government agencies including both USCIS and the Department of State (visa issuance). In particular, we expect more difficulty, scrutiny and processing time for H-1B petition requests – so last minute hires requiring immigration sponsorship will be very difficult to accommodate.

The processing delays and the increased petition scrutiny will continue and potentially increase over the course of 2019. Thus, it is imperative the departments submit H-1B processing request forms a minimum of six months before the desired appointment start date. Therefore, for spring/summer hires, including any July 1, 2019 faculty hires, the ISSO will need the paperwork as soon as possible to insure enough time for processing. We thank those departments who have already submitted requests to us for their spring hires and look forward to getting request for other spring/summer hires in the coming weeks. Please contact your ISSO advisor should you have questions regarding prospective hires in your department.

Thank you for your continued support of the ISSO. We look forward to working with you in 2019.