The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has a Business Litigation Committee (BLC) of which Michael Hammond is a member. They met this week and the hot topic of discussion was the recently released Neufeld memo (See January 13th blog post and the January HLG Business Immigration Monthly for more details on the memo). There is a strong belief that the memo was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. There is also the belief that the memo violates long-standing precedent and established law. It is believed that there are numerous industry groups as well as individual companies that may be pursuing litigation on this matter.
The BLC is in the process of working with the American Immigration Council to create a special section within its clearinghouse service http://www.legalactioncenter.org/litigation-clearinghouse specifically dedicated to collecting and posting relevant documents and information on this issue. This will allow all interested parties to be kept up to date on efforts being made to address this policy. We are looking for information regarding actual litigation as well as significant meetings, letters, etc. to USCIS officials as well as Congressional members on this topic. We will then organize the relevant documentation and make it available for access by others. If you are interested in participating in this clearinghouse effort, please keep us updated on your efforts. You can contact Mike Hammond at mfh@hammondlawfirm.com for additional information.