L-1 visas are being misused says immigration attorney

With the death of the Immigration Reform bill last year, the possibility of an increase in the cap for H-1B visas also died.

However, necessity being the mother of invention, companies are turning to another part of the alphabet, the L-1 visa, as a way to bring the same guest workers here that were unable to get in under the H-1B cap.

Now some believe the necessity is all about getting more skilled workers into the U.S. due to a dearth of skilled IT professionals in the States. Whereas others, myself included, believe the necessity is all about companies wanting cheap labor.

Meanwhile, Bob Meltzer, a top immigration attorney and CEO of VisaNow, an online immigration processing company, is one of the voices blowing the whistle on the current misuse of the L-1 visa.

One would assume the more avenues available for guess workers and or immigrants to apply for admission to the U.S., the more revenue potential for VisaNow.

So why is Meltzer blowing the whistle?

“We had people coming to us when they wanted to file L-1s [instead of H-1Bs] and we would say it is not appropriate,” Meltzer told me. The motive, Meltzer explains, is to get Congress to recognize that the law is “bending toward breaking” and that Congress has failed to recognize the problem with the H-1B cap.

Obviously, Meltzer is in a position to know. He has been involved in immigration issues since the 80s.

[If you want more background on the L-1 visa go to this column, Senate opens inquiry of L-1 visa program I wrote last June. here. Also, read Homeland Security probes L-1 visa abuses in my March 2006 blog.]

The original intent of the L-1 visa was to allow multinationals or foreign companies with affiliates in the U.S. to bring in managers, executives, or people with specialized knowledge not available here.

The L-1A addresses the issue of managers and executives and L-1B allows people with “specialized skills” entry into the U.S. for a three-year stay.

But now the L category is being used where the H-1B falls short. If a company was going to bring someone in on an H-1B and missed the quota, now it may try to squeeze work credentials into the L category, says Meltzer.

But companies are getting greedy and bringing in dozens or even hundreds of workers in on the L-1, which is why the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services and the Department of Labor are beginning to suspect it is being misused.

“Obviously you don’t need a hundred managers,” Meltzer says.

Last year’s Immigration Reform bill had some language that would put a cap on L-1s.

This isn’t the first time L-1s were misused nor the first time the government attempted to crack down on the abuse.

According to Meltzer, some countries that wanted to bring people into the States for whatever reasons used to say those people were being sent to open up a new branch of a company. Uncle Sam got suspicious and sent State Department officials to the address in the foreign country to check out the company only to find it did not exist.

The government appears to be leaning once more toward tighter controls. The level of requirements and support documentation for the L-1 visa is being much more stringently reviewed and examined than just a few years ago, according to Meltzer.

We can assume that if the government does crack down on the misuse of L-1s, the hue and cry for eliminating the cap on H-1Bs will grow more strident.

But with the election not until November and the new president not taking office until late January, don’t expect anything to happen with a review of H-1B visas for at least eighteen months.