LawQuest

23/10/2024

🗓️ Come Meet us at IMC, Churchgate Mumbai on Friday, October 24th! 🗓️

We’re thrilled that LawQuest will be at the IMC Business Connect Trade Fair.

Chat with us to navigate your visa and immigration requirements and discover how we can assist you.

📍 Venue: Walchand Hirachand Hall, IMC, Churchgate, Mumbai
🕙 Timing: 10.30 AM to 4:30 PM

IMC Chamber of Commerce and Industry LawQuest

13/08/2022

Preparing for your U.S. visa interview is a crucial step -

08/07/2020

Watch me tonight at 8:30 pm IST with Faye D’Souza discussing Donald Trump’s mandate on student visas and H-1Bs

08/07/2020

Indian students aspiring for or pursuing a US education should carefully choose their course work for the Fall Semester as too many online classes may render them out of status, or ineligible to enter the country on an F-1 visa.

Short-sighted and unaccommodating.

08/07/2020

My interview in the Huffington Post: Indian students are going to struggle with the US government’s mandate restricting online classes. Some May lose tuition fees and some may have to put a pause on their education for some time

Immigration lawyer Poorvi Chothani breaks down the US immigration department’s order on students with F1 and M1 whose classes go fully online.

07/07/2020

Bad news for the thousands of Indian students in the US on F-1 visas. The Government announced that those on M-1 and F-1 must leave the US if their college or university is going online-only this fall. Students within the country must depart and students outside will not be admitted or granted visas to pursue such online-only education.

ICE is directing foreign students whose schools will operate online-only this fall to transfer institutions or leave the country – or face deportation proceedings.

02/07/2020

H-1B petitions will be hit by inordinate delays. Refusing the grant of federal funds to the USCIS (an otherwise self funded organisation) leads to the furlough of 73% of its staff. These are President Trump’s back door tactics to suffocate immigration to the US at any cost - even if 13,000+ people lose jobs, which he claims he is protecting.

The move will effectively bring the U.S. immigration system grinding to a halt.

26/06/2020

Trump may curtail post 6-year H-1B extensions and require labor certification to be redone for EB-2 and EB-3 pending cases even if they have been certified in the past and the “green cards ” have been approved

The recent proclamation suggests a plan that, if implemented, could drive hundreds of thousands of H-1B visa holders out of the U.S.

23/06/2020

Individuals who already have H-1B and L visas and are currently in India may not be affected by the travel ban. However, it is best to wait for further clarity before making travel plans.

Individuals with approved H-1B and L-1 petitions but are outside the US and do not have a visa stamp as of today will not be able to enter the US until after 31-Dec-2020.

H-1B and L-1 visa holders who are presently in the US will not be affected by the ban. They should continue to remain in country to avoid future travel issues.

For the current H-1B CAP cases: Once petitions are approved individuals could have applied for visas and could have traveled to the US to begin work in October 1, 2020.

With the latest travel ban it appears that they will process visas for travel after the end of December 2020. There is no clarity how consulates will handle visa processing in the meantime.

Next year’s CAP process may look very different but there is no clarity on that as yet.

Trump's executive order comes days after the Supreme Court ruled the administration erred in its effort to halt the DACA program created by Obama.

13/06/2020

My wish is that there would be special visa categories carved out for specific classes of service providers like healthcare workers, people in the information technology sector - all of the people who need to head into countries and help out with specific temporary projects and their implementation at short notice.
My quote in the Economic times on Covid-19 impact on Indian Migrants.

"COVID-19 will inaugurate an era of deglobalization. Lots of countries are turning isolationist and protectionist. COVID-19 has convinced many countries that foreigners are to be feared. That strict border and immigration controls are essential", said Dr Shashi Tharoor, noted parliamentarian in a we...

10/06/2020

Every crisis is any opportunity! When the EU introduced GDPR, to protect clients’ personal data we had to take some quick, hard and expensive steps. But they stood us in good stead - when India lockdown we did not miss a beat to begin WFH as we were already working on the cloud!