Realizing that the current immigration laws are not start-up friendly, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) launched an “entrepreneur-in-residence” (“EIR”) program in October 2011.

While only limited progress can be made without changing the immigration law itself (and some efforts are underway to do that, as you may have heard), the EIR program is a laudable effort.

As immigration lawyers, we have not seen much change in the year plus the program has been operating. We were interested to see the training materials released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

We like that the presentation is subtitled “Building the Workforce of Tomorrow” and focuses on the job-creating benefits of facilitating immigrant entrepreneurship.  We hope that both examiners that decide applications and Congress internalize this message.