Altair Productdesign, Inc. v. Department of Homeland Security

          Mona K. Majzoub Magistrate Judge.

          OPINION AND ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFFS' MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT [Nos. 18-13493, 18-13967]

          LAURIE J. MICHELSON UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.

         Altair ProductDesign, Inc. is a “provider of engineering staffing services” that places its employees with other companies. (No. 18-13493, ECF No. 12, PageID.98; No. 18-13967, ECF No. 1, PageID.2.) Altair sought H-1B visas on behalf of several of the company's workers that were going to be placed in engineering positions with Ford and FCA. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services-a division of the Department of Homeland Security-denied the applications of these employees.^[1] Those 12 visa-seekers as well as Altair filed suit and then moved for summary judgment. (No. 18-13493, ECF No. 22; No. 18-13967, ECF No. 26.) As explained below, the Court DENIES the plaintiffs' motions.

         I.

         Altair contracts with corporate clients around the world to provide engineering services. In order to fulfill those contracts, Altair hires individuals with engineering degrees and places them at the clients' worksites. Many of these employees are nonimmigrant foreign nationals who require visas to work in the United States. Altair filed the visa petitions at issue with USCIS on April 12, 2018. The petitions contained materials such as passport copies, subcontractor agreements, and educational records. (No. 18-13493, ECF. No. 15-1, PageID.341-398.) These petitions also included contracts between Altair and the end clients Ford and FCA, staffing agreements, employment offer letters from Altair, and a brief description of each employee's proposed position and duties.

         For example, Altair sought to place Karan Mangaonkar at Ford as a “Fuel Economy and Performance Engineer” tasked with eight duties:

• Vehicle program fuel economy development from pre-programming start to postcertification.

• Developing and implementing of systems engineering to achieve best in class fuel economy

• Developing CAE vehicle fuel economy models to walk to future model years.

• Achieving fuel economy targets and working with interfacing engineering activities to ensure successful implementation.

• Testing and validating vehicle of the subsystem performance on global fuel economy drive cycles.

• Developing timing and test plans for design validation work.

• Competing with analytical forecasting of fuel economy capability.

• Testing BIC vehicles and data ...