Compliance playbooks

Structured checklists for organisations that already carry immigration obligations. Every task cites the regulation it comes from.

• Address reporting — Most people do not know this duty exists. It applies to almost every noncitizen in the United States, it is separate from telling USPS or your school, and failing it is a misdemeanour that can affect later applications.
• Documents that prove your status — Status is proved by a specific set of documents, and the regulations say which ones must be carried, retained or presented. This is what exists and what each one does - not what to do about any of it.
• F-1 student obligations — The duties that fall on the student rather than on the school. Breaching one of these is what "falling out of status" usually means in practice.
• H-1B worker: what applies to you — Most H-1B compliance sits with the employer. These are the parts that attach to the worker, plus the rights the regulations give you against your own employer.
• Tracking a filed case — What the record actually contains once something is filed, where each part comes from, and what the agency publishes about its own processing.
• Before international travel — What the regulations require to be valid at the moment of re-entry, and which pending applications are abandoned by departure. Facts about documents, not a recommendation about whether to travel.
• SEVIS reporting obligations — SEVP-certified schools carry reporting duties with fixed deadlines. Missing them is a school compliance issue, not a student one, and repeated failures put certification at risk.
• Responding to a policy change — A structured response to a published rule, so a change is assessed once and communicated deliberately rather than discovered by a student.
• H-1B worksite compliance — The obligations that attach once an employer files an LCA. These are enforceable by DOL through investigation and apply regardless of whether the petition is approved.
• Form I-9 and E-Verify hygiene — I-9 obligations apply to every employer for every employee, citizen or not. Errors are assessed per form, so systemic mistakes compound quickly.
• J-1 exchange visitor sponsor obligations — J-1 sponsors answer to the Department of State under a separate regulatory scheme from SEVP. A university running both F-1 and J-1 programmes carries both sets of duties, and the deadlines do not align.
• PERM recruitment and audit file — PERM is a test of the US labour market with fixed timing windows. A step run a day outside its window cannot be cured after the fact — the application is denied and the whole recruitment must be repeated.
• Responding to an ICE Notice of Inspection — An I-9 audit opens with three business days’ notice. That window is to locate and organise records, not to create or fix them — altering a form once an inspection is pending turns a paperwork case into a criminal one.
• Policy change monitoring — A repeatable routine for catching change across the four channels immigration policy actually moves through. Rulemaking is only one of them.

Why there is no personal playbook

The obvious thing to build here is "your H-1B journey" or "your green card roadmap" — a personalised sequence telling an individual what to do next. It is the most requested feature in this space, and we will not build it.

Sequencing steps for someone's own case is legal strategy, and only a licensed attorney or an accredited representative may provide it. No volume of disclaimers changes that.

These playbooks document what an organisation must do to meet obligations that already apply to it. A DSO's duty to update SEVIS within 21 days is not advice — it is 8 CFR 214.3(g)(2). Restating a regulated entity's own duties, with the citation, is publishing the law.

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Data updated October 2, 2026