50th Annual Immigration and Naturalization Institute sponsored by the Practicing Law Institute in New York City on December 6

Wednesday – Thursday, December 6 -7, 2017
at: PLI New York Center
1177 Avenue of the Americas, (2nd floor), entrance on 45th Street
New York, New York 10036
Phone: (800) 260-4754

Kathleen Campbell Walker (Member, El Paso) will co-present the topic: State Department/Consular Affairs Update.
The subjects covered will be:

Enhanced and extreme vetting.
Buy American, Hire American executive order and visa interviews.
Visa interview waiver program.
Technology changes at State Department.
Immigrant visa (IV) issues including National Visa Center (NVC) and visa bulletin.

REGISTER TODAY BY CLICKING HERE!

Why You Should Attend

PLI’s 50th Annual Immigration & Naturalization Institute will offer  an outstanding faculty of leading practitioners who will discuss recent developments, key immigration trends, and hot topics. 

What You Will Learn

• The current administration and implications for the immigration practitioner
• The latest immigration practice and policy developments
• Federal court litigation update
• Strategies for handling employer issues

Who Should Attend

This program is designed for attorneys who work with immigration matters as part of a diverse practice or who specialize in immigration law. In-house counsel and personnel managers who have employment and immigration matter responsibility also will benefit from attending this program.

Day One: 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

9:00 Opening Remarks and Introduction

Cynthia Juarez Lange

9:15 Washington Update for Immigration Practitioners

• Overview of the new political landscape
• Future use of executive orders
• Prospects for congressional action
• Update on major Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiatives – Stepped up enforcement, REAL ID

Austin T. Fragomen Jr., Rebecca Peters

10:15 Changes at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Processing and Policy

• Management changes at headquarters
• Service center and field operations processing times and challenges
• Major adjudications and policy changes
• Observations

  Alexis S. Axelrad

11:15 Networking Break

11:30 State Department/Consular Affairs Update

• Enhanced and extreme vetting
• Buy American, Hire American executive order and visa interviews
• Visa interview waiver program
• Technology changes at State Department
• Immigrant visa (IV) issues including National Visa Center (NVC) and visa bulletin

Anastasia Tonello, Kathleen Campbell Walker 

12:30 Lunch

1:30 Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) – Current Adjudication Trends and Anticipated Changes

• U.S. Department of Labor update
• Tackling prevailing wage problems
• Trending 9089 issues
• Leveraging Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals (BALCA) in your PERM practice

(HRCI and SHRM Credit for Human Resources Professionals)

Catherine L. Haight, Vincent W. Lau, Sarah K. Peterson

2:45 Opportunities and Challenges in H-1B Practice – Outsourcing, the H-1B Cap, and Increased Labor Condition Application (LCA) Enforcement

• New challenges facing employers placing workers at third party sites – and “receiving” employers
• Update on “prioritization” of H-1B numbers
• Defining specialty occupations – the “computer programmer memo” – potential changes to re-shape the H-1B category
• The LCA form and stepped up Wage and Hour Division investigations – where things stand
• Prospects for reform – both promising and problematic

(HRCI and SHRM Credit for Human Resources Professionals)

David M. Grunblatt, Cyrus D. Mehta

3:45 Networking Break

4:00 Federal Court Litigation Update

• Recent decisions, trends and analysis under the new Administration
• Challenges to the Trump administration policies including the travel ban, the sanctuary cities penalties, and the building of a border wall
• Litigation concerning business issues, particularly in the EB-5 area
• Recent updates and recent cases of interest from the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts

Lucas Guttentag, Ira J. Kurzban

5:00 Adjourn

Day Two: 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

9:00 Keeping Families Together – Developments in Policy and Processing

• Walls and pathways – families united and separated
• Deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) and other programs for relief – the road from here
• Update on the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA)
• 601A waivers, 212 waivers, and the permanent bar problem

Charles Kuck

10:15 Networking Break

10:30 Responding to Government Investigations of Employers

• Department of Justice efforts and being cognizant of employee rights and discrimination issues
• DHS and Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) enforcement update
• Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and DOL LCA audits
• New enforcement, detention and removal priorities from DOL, DOJ and the intelligence community

(HRCI and SHRM Credit for Human Resources Professionals)

Cynthia Juarez Lange, Marketa Lindt

11:45 Lunch

12:45 Asylum and Refugee Processing

• Refugee processing and the travel ban – status with regard to Syrian situation
• Prospective initiatives and perspectives of the Administration
• Administrative and judicial remedies
• Update on current litigation

Allen Orr Jr., Mark von Sternberg

2:00 Ethical Issues for the Immigration Practitioner

• Social networking and professional responsibility
• Issues when representing the undocumented and the effects of the evolving definition of what constitutes a crime
• Duty of candor to the tribunal
  • Differing views of duty during administrative agency representation
• Dual representation in immigration practice

Jojo Annobil, Claire R. Thomas, Stephen W. Yale-Loehr

3:15 Networking Break

3:30 New Trends with Regard to Admissibility

• Overview of common admissibility issues
• New trends with the government finding inadmissibility
• Inadmissibility and the differing views of USCIS and the U.S. Department of State
• Provisional unlawful presence waivers – regulatory changes
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and inadmissibility

Robert C. Divine, Laurel Scott

4:30 Adjourn