Complaint Filed in District Court Challenging USCIS’s Unlawful Denial of H-1B Petitions Filed by American Businesses

The American Immigration Council, AILA, and the law firms Van Der Hout, LLP, Joseph & Hall P.C., and Kuck Baxter Immigration LLC filed a lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of California in San Jose, seeks to rein in the unlawful adjudication practice USCIS uses in determining whether a market research analyst job qualifies as a “specialty occupation,” and the agency’s misinterpretation of the Occupational Outlook Handbook—a publication of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics that profiles hundreds of occupations in the United States’ job market. (Madkudu Inc., v. USCIS, 4/16/20)

Note: on 5/4/20, the plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification, stating:

“Because Defendant USCIS engages in a pattern and practice of denying petitions for market research analysts on the same basis followed in Plaintiffs’ cases, Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court certify the following proposed class under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a) and 23(b)(2):

All U.S. employers who in 2019 filed, or in the future will file, a petition (Form I-129 or any successor) with USCIS for an H-1B classification under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) for a market research analyst where:

• USCIS denied or will deny the petition solely or in part based on a finding that the OOH entry for market research analyst does not establish that the occupation is a specialty occupation, and thus does not satisfy 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(h)(4)(iii)(A)(1); and
• But for this finding, the petition would be approved.”

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Cite as AILA Doc. No. 20041633.

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