SISKIND'S SUMMARY OF IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT

Please read the very thoughtful analysis from my law partner Greg Siskind's summary section by section of the Immigration reform act introduced today at the Senate:

http://discuss.ilw.com/content.php?1706-Blogging-Section-by-Section-Summary-of-Senate-Immigration-Bill-Title-II-Legal-Immigration-Reform-by-Greg-Siskind

USCIS RECEIVED APPROXIMATELY 124,000 H-1B PETITIONS

USCIS received approximately 124,000 H-1B petitions during the filing period from April 1, 2013 to April 5, 2013, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption. On April 7, 2013, USCIS conducted its lottery (computer-generated random selection process) to select the 85,000 petitions (probably a number closer to 82,000 petitions) to fill the cap.
For cap-subject petitions not randomly selected, USCIS will reject and return the petition with filing fees. The agency conducted the selection process for advanced degree exemption petitions first. All advanced degree petitions not selected were part of the random selection process for the 65,000 limit.
So, this means that applicants have about 67% or about 2 out of 3 changes of getting selected. Not great at all.

H-1B CAP FOR 2014 REACHED; LOTTERY WILL HAPPEN

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced late Friday that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year (FY) 2014. USCIS has also received more than 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of persons exempt from the cap under the advanced degree exemption.
USCIS will not accept H-1B petitions subject to the FY 2014 cap or the advanced degree exemption after Friday April 5, 2013. USCIS will use their lottery system (a computer-generated random selection process) among all FY 2014 cap-subject petitions received through April 5, 2013. They will run a lottery on the advanced degree cases first and then all the advanced degrees not selected will join the pool with the other cases.
USCIS received very high volume and they do not know yet what date the lottery results will be announced.  Also, USCIS is not providing the total number of petitions received, so no one knows as of yet.
Congress, what more proof do you need that we need more H-1B numbers???

ILW.COM PREDICTS H-1B VISAS WILL NOT RUN OUT NEXT WEEK

Despite USCIS' announcement last week that anticipated H-1B usage may trigger a lottery for all H-1B petitions that are receipted by April 5, 2013, Immigration Law Weekly through its daily newsletter Immigration Daily stands by its observation that a lottery will likely not be triggered.  ILW believes that usage numbers for this season are headed higher than the previous season, but are still not large enough to trigger a lottery.
ILW's prediction stems from the fact that less than a dozen companies account for the vast majority of the new numbers, all of these companies are in the IT sector, and only these companies matter in projecting whether a lottery will be triggered or not (e.g., Microsoft). As best as ILW can tell, none of these companies are intending to file the kinds of numbers necessary to trigger a lottery - despite the fact that a whole lot more petitions, which would last year have been L petitions, are being filed this year as Hs.
I hope this is true because clients are coming out of the woodwork to get H-1B petitions filed, although we worked out a plan to get all of our cap cases filed today for delivery early next week.

FACEBOOK'S ZUCKERBERG ORGANIZING SUPER PAC FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM

According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is organizing a Super PAC - political advocacy group for immigration reform issues that are near and dear to the tech community in the area. According to the San Francisco Chronicle Zuckerberg is ready to personally invest up to $20 million, and other technology leaders in the area may follow his suit. If this new advocacy group is going to be registered as a nonprofit, it could also be treated as a Super PAC – which is exempt from some donor disclosure rules, thanks to the 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC.
Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert made powerful examples against allowing Super PACs to continue during his coverage of the 2012 presidential elections last year. However, since Congress is unlikely to do anything about that any time soon, I am very happy that some of the tech leaders are putting serious money towards immigration reform specifically needed to combat our legal immigration crisis – no sufficient H-1B visas and immigrant visas for legal, skilled, professional and advanced degree workers.

USCIS EXPECTS H-1B CAP TO BE REACHED BY APRIL 5

USCIS recently announced that it expects to receive more than the 85,000 petitions than the H-1B cap allows for the entire year between April 1, 2013 and April 5, 2013.
This is confirming our empirical data of handling a larger volume of H-1B cases this year that the cap will most likely be reached in early April, perhaps even on the first day.
Because USCIS expects to receive a large number of H-1B cases in the first week of April, they announced that they will be suspending the premium processing program for H-1B cap cases by 15 days, and will allow premium processing of these cases starting on April 15, 2013 or later.
If more cases than the cap allows for are receipted, a lottery system that was utilized in previous years will take place by randomly selecting a certain number of petitions and rejecting the ones not selected.
Requesting premium processing service does not guarantee lottery selection or an advantage in that process if a lottery will happen.
We are working very hard to make sure all of our cases will be filed on April 1, 2013.
Call us at 770-913-0800 or go to http://www.visalaw.com/atlanta.html to contact us if you have any questions.

IMMIGRATION REFORM FOR PHYSICIANS

With the immigration reform debate going on in Congress and in the media these days, few efforts are being made to improve the physician shortage and the shortage faced in other healthcare workers like nurses and technicians. The U.S. already employs a substantial proportion of physicians and other health workers (between 20%-25%) who were educated or trained overseas, and we could employ more of them without taking jobs away from Americans. As the nation ages and more previously uninsured individuals seek treatment under the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), the health of millions of Americans may depend on the availability of more physicians and health workers from abroad.
There is already a significant shortage of physicians and healthcare workers in rural areas and inner cities. HHS has almost 6,000 primary medical health professional shortage areas which would need about 16,000 physicians to cover the medical needs of patients living in these areas. The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) estimates a shortage of over 90,000 physicians, including 45,000 primary care physicians, by the end of 2020. There just are not enough medical schools in the U.S. to meet this demand.
Granting additional temporary and permanent visas to international medical graduates would meet our national interest and help alleviate physician shortages across the country. For one, hospitals and medical clinics located in a health professionals shortage area should be granted an exemption from the H-1B cap so that they could hire physicians all year long. Also, we need to increase the green card quotas for physicians from India and China whose permanent residency cases are dragging for years on end due to per-country limits on immigrant visas. Removing barriers and allowing international medical graduates to get to the U.S. quicker will help alleviate the shortage and help many Americans receive quality healthcare no matter where they live.