USCIS Now Accepting Copies Of Negative P Visa Consultations Directly From Labor Unions
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said that
effective February 8, 2019, the agency has begun accepting copies
of negative consultation letters directly from labor unions
relating to current or future P nonimmigrant visa petitions. USCIS
noted that a consultation letter from a U.S. labor organization is
generally required for petitions in the P visa classification,
which covers athletes, artists, entertainers, and their essential
support personnel.
Typically, a petitioner submits the necessary P visa
consultation with the petition, and that process requirement
remains unchanged. After reported concerns from labor unions that
some consultation letters, also known as advisory opinions, may
have been falsified by petitioners and submitted to USCIS as
no-objections or favorable consultations, when in fact they were
negative, USCIS announced that it would begin accepting copies of
negative consultation letters for O visa petitions. USCIS is now
expanding this to P visa petitions, and labor unions can send
copies of negative O or P visa petition consultation letters
directly to USCIS so that they can be compared to the consultation
letter submitted by the O or P petitioner.
P nonimmigrant visas are available for individuals coming to the
U.S. temporarily to:
- Perform at a specific athleticcompetition as an athlete, individually or as part of a group or
team, at an internationally recognized level of performance (P-1A).
P athletes include:
-
- Internationally recognizedathletes
- Certain professional athletes,certain amateur athletes or coaches, and professional or amateur
athletes performing in a theatrical ice skating production under
the COMPETE Act
- Perform as a member of anentertainment group that has been recognized internationally as
outstanding in its discipline for a sustained and substantial
period of time (P-1B);
- Perform as an artist or entertainer,individually or as part of a group, who will perform under a
reciprocal exchange program between an organization in the U.S. and
an organization in another country (P-2); or
- Perform, teach, or coach as artistsor entertainers, individually or as part of a group, under a
program that is culturally unique (P-3).
USCIS said labor unions should send copies of negative P
nonimmigrant consultation letters to UnionConsultationMailbox@uscis.dhs.gov.
Unions should only send copies of negative consultation letters for
O and P petitions to that emailbox. To ensure USCIS matches the
consultation letters to the appropriate petitions, labor unions
should include each beneficiary’s name and the last five digits
of the beneficiary’s passport number on the consultation
letters.
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