Ongoing Advocacy Efforts
June 11, 2012
WSM continues to lead national advocacy efforts for positive change to our immigration system. Following our firm’s earlier participation in an Entrepreneurs in Residence Summit in San Jose this winter, on May 25th, WSM attorneys participated in a national conference call with the Assistant Chief Counsel for the Small Business Administration to discuss SBA efforts to improve immigration adjudications for small business petitioners. This fell on the heels of the government’s forced release of an internal immigration service memo that revealed that the service suspects fraud in cases filed by companies with less than $10 million in annual gross revenues, less than 25 employees, and less than 10 years in operation (now referred to as the “10/25/10” memo). The memo confirms what we and our colleagues have long suspected regarding the tremendous uptick in Requests for Evidence and denials on petitions filed by smaller companies and foreign entrepreneurs. WSM is working with the SBA and the Administration’s Start Up America initiative to highlight these types of issues on a national level, and to bring change to the way the immigration service receives and adjudicates petitions.
