United States District Court, E.D. Michigan, Southern Division
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 ...