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The American Immigration Lawyers
Association (AILA) has announced that the Senate Judiciary
Committee held a markup of a proposal to provide temporary
relief from the H-1B visa blackout and the employment-based
immigrant visa backlogs. The session was held on October 20,
2005, as part of the budget reconciliation process. The trade
off for this relief would be a marked increase in government
filing fees on some petitions. The following immigration
proposals were passed from the committee:
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Impose a new $500 fee on immigrant visa
petitions for the EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 categories;
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Recapture unused employment-based visas
from prior years for immediate allocation of up to 90,000 per
year. (Estimates indicate there are only 90,000-100,000 unused
numbers to be tapped);
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Exempt spouses and minor children from
counting against the annual cap on employment-based immigrant
visas. (Estimates are that this would lead to an annual
increase of 80,000-90,000 employment-based immigrant visas);
-
Allow individuals to apply for
adjustment of status before an immigrant visa is deemed
currently available. (Of course, approval could not occur
until the visa number is available). This would lessen the
impact of retrogression of visa numbers on the front-end of
the case so that individuals who are other wise eligible to
submit an application for adjustment of status could do so
regardless of whether their priority date is current. The
obvious benefit would be to enable individuals to secure
travel and employment authorization as adjustment of status
applicants and to also potentially benefit from the
portability provisions of the American Competitiveness in the
21st Century Act;
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Recapture approximately 300,000 unused
H-1B numbers dating back to FY 1991. Please note that one
amendment to the proposal was put forth by Senator Diane
Feinstein. Her amendment would allocate 30,000 rather than
60,000 visas to be available annually. This would effectively
raise the cap from 65,000 to 95,000 for at least 10 years;
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Impose a new fee on the recaptured H-1B
visas so that the fees on the original 65,000 H-1B allotment
remains unchanged but the additional 30,000 available annually
will carry an additional $500 fee. This type of proposal would
add an additional counting burden to the CIS; and
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Impose a new $750 fee on L-1 visas.
(This was part of Senator Feinstein's amendment and was
necessary to offset the reduction in revenue resulting from
the limitation on recaptured H-1B numbers from 60,000 to
30,000).
Jackson & Hertogs would like to emphasize that these are merely proposals
at this time, not final bills. We would also like to thank all
of our clients who agreed to add their names to the letter
delivered to the Senate by AILA requesting H-1B relief. While
it appears our efforts have had an impact, we urge all
stakeholders to continue to contact their Congressional
representatives to support these Senate Judiciary proposals. You
can find a link on our web site that will assist you in
contacting your congressional representatives. They need to hear
from U.S. employers why these immigration programs are so
important.
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