AILA Reports New Bills Submitted to House Regarding Skilled Workers
Cite as “AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 08031931 (posted Mar. 19, 2008)”
On March 14, three bills were introduced into the House of Representatives relating to high-skilled visas.
Rep. Smith (R-TX) introduced H.R. 5642 which would increase the numerical limitation with respect to H–1B non-immigrants for fiscal years 2008 and 2009.
Rep. Kennedy (D-RI) introduced H.R. 5634 which would exempt from numerical limitations any alien who has received a Ph.D. from an institution of higher education within the 3-year period preceding such alien’s petition for special immigrant status.
Rep. Giffords (D-AZ) introduced H.R. 5630 which would modify certain requirements with respect to H–1B non-immigrants.
C-G will provide future postings describing each of these bills in more detail. �
April 10th, 2008 at 9:50 am
C-G Summmarizes and comments on this proposed legislation, as follows:
(1) HR 5643 (which has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee) provides that the H-1B quotas for Fiscal Years 2008 and 2009 would be raised to 195,000. We query how this legislation could apply to FY 2008 when that year closed this past October 1, 2007. The bill also does not address caps following FY 2009.
(2) HR 5634 (which has also been referred to the House Judiciary Committee) provides that Phds could qualify to apply for special immigrant status, if the degree were received from a U.S. Institution of Higher learning within three years prior to the filing of a special immigrant petition.
(3) HR 5630 (which has also been referred to the House Judiciary Committee) provides for several changes to the H-1B laws. Foremost is that the H-1B cap would be raised to 130,000 per year for FYs 2008 and following, except that in FYs 2010-2015, if a limit is reached, the cap for the following year would be 180,000 or the previous year’s limit plus 20%, whichever is greater. The bill also provides that the Advanced Degree H-1B cap of 20,000 would be applicable both to recipients of Masters’ degrees or higher from U.S. institutions and non-U.S. institutions, except that Advanced Degree visas would be limited to holders of degrees in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and where such level of education is required for the employment. RI Goodman C-G Administrator.
Judging by this proposed legislation and the recent rule change extending OPT for graduates in the maths and sciences, our sense is that the trend in immigration reform concerning skilled workers will be to heavily bias rule making in favor of math and science students and the technology sector. Robert I. Goodman, C-G Administrator