GREETINGS

NEWS ITEM ONE: 

NOTICE TO EMPLOYERS:  H-1B VISAS ARE STILL AVAILABLE.

As of August 14, 2009, approximately 45,000 H-1B cap-subject petitions and approximately 20,000 petitions qualifying for the advanced degree cap exemption had been filed.  USCIS will continue to accept both cap-subject petitions and advanced degree petitions until a sufficient number of H-1B petitions have been received to reach the statutory limits, taking into account the fact that some of these petitions may be denied, revoked, or withdrawn.

NEWS ITEM TWO: 

IMMIGRATION REFORM UPDATE

President Barack Obama on Thursday (August 20, 2009) managed to undo some of the damage he did recently with immigrants’ rights advocates — who were angered when Obama said in Mexico (on August 10, 2009) that immigration reform would have to wait until after health care and energy bills

passed congress.  What about the reform legislation?  In the above mentioned August 20 meeting, according to participants, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will introduce and hold hearings on a major immigration bill this fall.  [http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26308.html#ixzz0PErrI5HC]

COMMENTARY

The next question becomes, what views or goals does Senator Chuck Schumer have with regard to immigration?

Senator Charles Ellis Schumer is the senior U.S. Senator from the State of New York, serving since 1999. In November 2006, he was elected to the new post of Vice Chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus.  In this position, he is the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer]

The Senator was born in New York in 1950.  His parents, Abraham Schumer and Selma Rosen were also born in New York.  Senator Schumer earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1974.  He passed the New York State Bar in 1975 but never practiced law, entering politics instead [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer]. 

He serves on six committees in the Senate.  The Senator is Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security.  The Senator, on June 24, 2009 gave a major address on immigration reform and outlined the following seven principles[http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/record.cfm?id=314990]

1.      Illegal immigration is wrong, and a primary goal of comprehensive immigration reform must be to dramatically curtail future illegal immigration.

2.      Operational control of our borders--through significant additional increases in infrastructure, technology, and border personnel--must be achieved within a year of enactment of legislation.

3.      A biometric-based employer verification system—with tough enforcement and auditing—is necessary to significantly diminish the job magnet that attracts illegal aliens to the United States and to provide certainty and simplicity for employers.

4.      All illegal aliens present in the United States on the date of enactment of our bill must quickly register their presence with the United States Government—and submit to a rigorous process of converting to legal status and earning a path to citizenship—or face imminent deportation.

5.      Family reunification is a cornerstone value of our immigration system.  By dramatically reducing illegal immigration, we can create more room for both family immigration and employment-based immigration.

6.      We must encourage the world’s best and brightest individuals to come to the United States and create the new technologies and businesses that will employ countless American workers, but must discourage businesses from using our immigration laws as a means to obtain temporary and less-expensive foreign labor to replace capable American workers; and finally

7.      We must create a system that converts the current flow of unskilled illegal immigrants into the United States into a more manageable and controlled flow of legal immigrants who can be absorbed by our economy.

The focus of these principles is clearly to reduce the flow of illegal immigration.  That is an honorable goal.  The mechanics of reaching this goal seems to be stated in the Senator’s fourth principle:  illegal aliens must quickly register their presence with the United States Government—and submit to a rigorous process of converting to legal status and earning a path to citizenship—or face imminent deportation.  To put this into historical context, we should examine the last major effort by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to register foreigners.     

NSEERS, INS Special Registration) was a system for registration of certain non-citizens within the United States, initiated in September 2002 as part of the War on Terrorism.  As of May 2003, 82,581 individuals had complied with the domestic portion of the program. Of these people, at least 13,153 were put into deportation proceedings.  Although the program originally included a requirement for the remainder to reregister annually, this was later eliminated by the Department of Homeland Security. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Registration#Results_of_the_program]

As an attorney practicing immigration law at this time I experienced Special Registration first hand.  The program taxed an already burdened system.  Why did DHS eliminate the re-registration requirement?  Special Registration did not meet its objectives of catching any terrorists and also administering it was a huge burden to DHS.  Almost 83,000 special registrants over burdened the system.  Senator Schumer wants an estimated 12 million illegal aliens to register themselves with DHS.  What resources would DHS have to administer this? 

In addition, the Senator calls the process ‘rigorous.’  With rigorous standards, not many aliens would qualify.  If a foreigner does not qualify, would he volunteer to go to DHS and register himself?  This will put him into removal proceedings immediately.  If 500,000 applicants feel that they have a shot at obtaining legal status and register, this leaves 11.5 million foreigners in the same position as before.  This will not accomplish the stated objectives.  DHS may not even have the resources to process the hypothetical 500,000 registrants.     

We do not have any specific guidelines, but the mechanics of the Senator’s fourth principle seem flawed.  Creating a pathway to citizenship could also be a political land mine for the Democrats.  This country is in the middle of a deep recession.  The U.S. military still has commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The health care reform issue represents a huge battle for the administration.  Would the White House and leading Democrats have the broad consensus of support to make fundamental changes in immigration?  Why not start small?  Why not start by eliminating the H-1B cap?  Specialized workers are essential to any economic recovery.  Why limit their numbers?  This would be my advice to Congress:  take it one small step at a time.  Combining large fundamental changes in one broad package will not work in today’s political landscape.