U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued a new guidance memo clarifying its policies on employers who filing petitions for O or P classification agents on behalf of other employers. To submit an O or P petition as an agent for multiple employers, a petitioner must show that it has been authorized to act for the other employers for purposes of the petition, but is not required to show that it is established in business as an agent outside the context of the petition. The new guidance follows an October memorandum that announced stricter policies on employers filing as agents for others.
The new memo is welcome news for many employers, especially arts and cultural organizations. In October, USCIS announced that it would require a petitioning employer to be regularly in business as an agent in order for it to submit an O or P petition on behalf of multiple employers. This policy caused great concern among arts groups. To conserve costs when sponsoring a foreign national coming to the United States to perform in several events or performances for multiple organizations, these groups frequently joined together to authorize one employer to submit a single petition covering all the events on the foreign national’s itinerary. The October memo severely limited their ability to do this, because most arts organizations are not in regular business as agents. The memo would have required each organization to file its own petition on behalf of a single foreign national coming to the United States for multiple events – a significant expense for groups with limited resources.
Under the new guidance, a petitioner filing for itself and other employers need only show evidence that it has been authorized to serve as the agent for the other employers for purposes of the filing of the petition – such as an authorization letter signed by the other employers; a statement confirming the foreign national’s itinerary and the names and addresses of the other employers, signed by the petitioner and the other employers; or statements from the other employers concerning the nature of the petitioner’s representation of them and the foreign beneficiary. The petitioner does not need to show that it is being compensated by the other employers. If evidence of authorization is not submitted with the initial petition, USCIS adjudicators are to issue a request for evidence (RFE). If the evidence is sufficient and the petition is otherwise approvable, USCIS is to grant a validity period that covers all the qualifying events in the petition, up to the maximum period of stay for the visa category. If the evidence is not sufficient, the petition validity period will cover only the events for which the petitioner will directly employ the foreign national; the events of other named employers will not be covered.
The new guidance memo is available
here.