Communique – Volume 16, Number 1

February 2020

Greetings from the ISSO!

In this issue:

Travel from China Banned Temporarily

Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus suspends entry into the U.S. of all aliens (immigrants, nonimmigrants, and other non U.S. citizens) who were physically present within the People’s Republic of China, excluding the Special Autonomous Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States due to the coronavircus outbreak.

We are carefully monitoring scholar travel as we anticipate that delays for those who are expected to arrive in the coming weeks and for those trying to leave after their activity has ended. We encourage departments to notify us if they are contacted by any scholars who are affected by the temporary travel ban so that we can assist in facilitating travel once the ban is lifted.

Please see ISSO news for more details about the travel ban and/or refer to BU Today for the latest BU news on Coronavirus. 

Travel Ban Updates

President Trump recently announced an expansion to Presidential Proclamation 9645 Executive Order. Travel to the U.S. as an immigrant for nationals of Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania will be suspended effective February 21, 2020. These new restrictions only apply to immigrant visas and do not restrict nonimmigrant visa processing. Therefore, the new restrictions should have little to no impact on our scholar community. See Executive Order/Travel Ban news and country specific restrictions for specific details and contact your scholar advisor should you have any questions.

New Online Resources for Administrators

The ISSO has added some new and useful online information for administrators. We are confident that these new pages will provide further context regarding the importance of record keeping, communication and accuracy related to your international scholars and employees. We welcome your feedback on these pages and hope that you will find them useful.

Since every BU scholar has a unique immigration and employment status, we have compiled some common ISSO terminology and further explain our record keeping & definitions. It is important for host departments to understand these dates for effective communication related to an international scholar.

As an employer, BU must comply with all federal regulations related to employment verification. While most of our clients are aware that the I-9 needs to be completed within 3-business days, it is also important to understand that the regulations require updates or ‘reverifications’ throughout the duration of the BU employment.

Our long monthly email reminders will be a lot shorter the next time you get one! Whether your international scholar is leaving or continuing, we have compiled an extensive list of options for responding to our monthly email reminders. Thus, the next email reminder you get related to a scholar in your department, will be short and sweet and simply link to this page.

We look forward to your feedback on these new resources.

Faculty Hiring Season and Immigration Processing Times

Now is the time to start thinking about immigration processing for your 2020 faculty hires! This is more important than ever to insure that your new faculty member will be able to commence his or her BU employment as desired. We continue to experience processing slowdowns at all government agencies including both USCIS and the Department of State (visa issuance). In particular, we expect more difficulty, scrutiny and processing time for H-1B petition requests – so last minute hires requiring immigration sponsorship will be very difficult to accommodate.

We expect that the processing delays and the increased petition scrutiny will continue for the duration of 2020 so it is imperative the departments submit H-1B processing request forms a minimum of six months before the desired appointment start date. Therefore, for spring/summer hires, including any July 1, 2019 faculty hires, the ISSO will need the paperwork as soon as possible to insure enough time for processing. We thank those departments who have already submitted requests to us for their spring/summer hires and look forward to getting request for other spring/summer hires in the coming weeks. Please contact your ISSO advisor should you have questions regarding prospective hires in your department.

Schedule an ISSO Administrator Training

ISSO Scholar Services is going out on the road in 2020! We are changing things up this year and rather than having you come to us, we want to come to you. We are hoping to schedule trainings that are customized to the specific needs of your school. Please consider the following and then contact your advisor to discuss your training needs in more detail:

Do you want us to come during a regularly scheduled academic administrator meeting or at another scheduled time? Do you want all administrators to attend or only the designated departmental contacts? Do you need a high level view of the ISSO, a more in-depth view of our processing and forms, or perhaps a little bit of both? How much time is available for the presentation?

Our 2020 administrator training road show has already started and we have several schools that are already scheduled. If you are interested in scheduling a training or a joint training with another school/college, we are happy to accommodate your needs so please contact us.

 Thank you for your continued support of the ISSO!