Department of Homeland Security May 9, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is accepting comments on the draft National Incident Management System (NIMS) document. NIMS provides a consistent nationwide template to enable Federal, State, tribal, and local governments, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations to work together to prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of incidents, regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity.

This rule affects certain Canadian and Mexican citizens who seek temporary entry as professionals to the United States pursuant to the TN classification, as established by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA or Agreement). TN nonimmigrants are Canadian or Mexican citizens who obtain temporary entry into the United States as business persons to engage in business activities at a professional level. This rule proposes to increase the maximum allowable period of admission for TN nonimmigrants from one year to three years, and allow otherwise eligible TN nonimmigrants to be granted an extension of stay in increments of up to three years instead of the current maximum of one year. TD nonimmigrants (``NAFTA Dependent'') are the spouses and unmarried minor children of TN nonimmigrants. TD nonimmigrants who would otherwise be eligible for TD nonimmigrant status would be eligible to be admitted and seek extensions for the same period of time as the TN principal. The purpose of this narrow change is to remove certain administrative requirements on TN nonimmigrants and U.S. employers and U.S. entities, thereby making this nonimmigrant classification more attractive to eligible professionals and their U.S. employers. The rule also proposes to remove filing location requirements from the TN regulations and instead provides that such locations will be prescribed by form instructions in order to provide more flexibility in program administration, as well as making certain technical modifications to eliminate outdated references to prior requirements. Finally, this rule proposes to revise the text of 8 CFR 214.1(a)(2) and (c)(1) and 8 CFR 248.3 by replacing the outdated term ``TC'' (the previous classification given to Canadian workers under the 1989 Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement) with ``TN.''