Tag Archives: EB-2

H-1B Visa Article

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H-1B Visa from Houston

H-1B VisaThe Houston Chronicle published an article on H-1B visas, angling with the usual focus on Silicon Valley but also adding a focus on Houston. It notes that Houston is a city with many businesses relying on the H-1B visa, which allows skilled foreign national workers to work in the United States with a sponsoring employer for a maximum of two 3 year periods.

The article’s focus (outside the geographic locations) is on the number available. It recites the history of the H-1B visa: Congress set a cap of 65,000 in 1990 and added 20,000 visas with a specific Master’s and above category in the United States. There is an unfortunate conflation with the H-1B visa as the sole work visa program, as there are plenty of other employment-based visas in the United States: E, L, O, P. Regardless, the article’s concentration on the H-1B visa situation highlights the geographic and wider country limits on the visa and how certain employers are lobbying for more availability. The cap has not always remained stagnant. There was a period of increasing availability that ended in 2004. (the article omits this).

The practical implications of the low supply of H-1B visas versus the high demand is that applicants are subject to a lottery. Rather than being adjudicated on the merits, the application must first be selected to be adjudicated. Last year, there were 250,000 applications vying for adjudication. All H-1B visa applications must be submitted within a specific timeframe and the visa, if approved, begins on October 1. There are exceptions, as there are certain H-1B visas that are “cap-exempt.”

House Members Request Visa Bulletin Information

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House Democrats Seek Information on Visa Bulletin Revision

Last week, a small contingent of US House of Representatives Democrats requested Department of Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson and Department of State Secretary John Kerry to release information on the number of individuals harmed by the revision to the October Visa Bulletin and plans to provide relief for those individuals. The original October Visa Bulletin had modernized the visa system by showing both priority and filing dates to expedite the process and be more efficient with visa availability.

The letter has the following to say about the Revised Bulletin:

We have heard estimates that the revised Bulletin would decrease the number of immigrants eligible for filing by 80% to 95% from the number projected to be eligible under the original Bulletin filing dates. If true, the revision would effectively reverse the progress made toward the Administraton’s goals to reform our visa system.

As for a solution:

We strongly urge that the Department of Homeland Security implement regulatory changes that would benefit high-skilled workers waiting in the United States for immigrant visa numbers. Specifically, we are referring to 1) providing beneficiaries of an approved employment-based petition (Form I-140), and their derivative dependents, employment authorization; and 2) amending the regulations so that such petitions will remain valid in cases where the beneficiary has a new job that is in the same or similar classification as the job for which the petition was filed.

The revision to the October Visa Bulletin dashed the hopes of thousands of eligible applicants for Green Cards. This was labeled as #Visagate2015. Many of these hopeful applicants had been waiting for years for their priority dates to become current. Potential applicants under the Children Status Protection Act and Employment Based 2 and 3 categories Indian and Chinese nationals are among the most affected. A lawsuit has been filed, but the attempt to compel an injunction to undo the revision did not succeed.

“High Skilled” Immigration Data

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NSF Releases “High-Skilled Immigration Data”

In the overall immigration rhetoric, one consistently positive aspect is the number of “high-skilled” immigrants in the science, engineering, and medicine fields. The debate often swirls about how to retain those immigrants, many of whom are at educated and trained in the United States. Hopefully that debate receives more substantive discussion and meritorious ideas as the presidential elections careen forward next year. The STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields dominate this discussion.

Last month, the National Science Foundation published information about the increased number of scientists and engineers in the workforce and immigrants’ role in that. In “Immigrants’ Growing Presence in the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Education and Employment Characteristics in 2013,” the data break down immigrants and U.S. born citizens and where the immigrants originate.

The data also categorize by fields and level of degree attainment

Visagate 2015 Update

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Visagate Update: FOIA Filed

This blog has been covering #Visagate2015 since its inception. The lawsuit, Mehta v. DOS, requested a Temporary Restraining Order for the purpose of reinstating the original October Visa Bulletin. The revised version made major rollbacks on the filing dates. The November Visa Bulletin retained the filing dates on the categories that suffered the rollbacks through the October revision.

The most recent update is that the American Immigration Council has filed Freedom of Information Act Requests with the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. This should help demonstrate why DOS retracted its original visa bulletin and how it did its math. The bulletin is an estimation and attempts not to waste immigrant visas, but the estimations are difficult because the percentage allocations for each category and the moving parts involved. For example, the EB-2 category for India and China has extraordinary backlogs. Approximately 28.7% of employment-based immigrant visas are reserved for EB-2. Then there are per country quotas, plus unused EB-1 immigrant visas that roll into potentially available EB-2 visas.

The American Immigration Council is attempting to uncover the rationale for the changes in the revised bulletin.