Thursday, October 26, 2006

Excellent Q&A on backlogs, green card categories

Maryland Immigration Law blog has an excellent question and answers section on all the questions that you can ask regarding employment based permanent resident categories, backlogs and questions people have when they're stuck in backlogs.

Visa Retrogression Questions & Answers

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Top stories from InformationWeek

Every week I get this email of top outsourcing news, well this week I thought I'd share some of them. First up is from China. Zilog Inc, which delivers quality embedded technology in Microcontrollers, Microprocessors, Infrared, IrDA, Communications and TV solutions, is increasing its investment in China.

Zilog to Increase Investment In China
Pegging much of its future growth on Asia, Zilog Inc. intends to increase investment in its Shanghai design center so that it can be more responsive to its increasing number of customers here.

TI Veteran Sets Up Firm In India
A new venture offering analog and mixed-signal design and layout services has been launched by Vivek Pawar, an industry veteran who was most recently at Texas Instruments India for 15 years. Christened Sankalp Semiconductor, the firm plans to provide methodology and automation-oriented high-end services and solutions in these areas.

And finally, here comes the AMD chips of the future...
SemIndia Chips to Roll Out In A Year
With the first batch of chips from SemIndia Inc.'s fab in Hyderabad scheduled to come off the production line in less than a year, the facility has already procured an order worth about $400 million, according to a Thursday (Oct. 19) report by Cybermedia News.

Indian Community Burgeoning in America

Roughly every third person who lives Edison, a New York suburb, is of Asian Indian ancestry. Many are new immigrants who have come to work as physicians, engineers and high-tech experts and are drawn to "Little India" by convenience it's near the commuter train and familiarity.

Roughly 2.3 million people of Indian ancestry, including immigrants and the American-born, now call the U.S. home, according to 2005 Census data. That's up from 1.7 million in 2000.

They have big communities in New Jersey, New York, California and Texas, and their average yearly household income is more than $60,000 35 percent higher than the nation overall. Indian Americans, along with Indian expatriates worldwide, sent about $23 billion back to India in 2005, World Bank data show.

News story: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2596841

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Non-US citizens rights to challenge detention taken away

U.S. President George Bush today signed a bill allowing tough CIA interrogation and military trials of terrorism suspects. The expected purpose of this "torture" bill is to legally allow intelligence professionals to use techniques like sleep deprivation and induced hypothermia while questioning "terror" suspects without facing legal court challenges from the suspects.
"This bill provides legal protections that ensure our military and intelligence personnel will not have to fear lawsuits filed by terrorists, simply for doing their jobs," Bush said, lauding the CIA interrogation program as a "vital tool" that has thwarted numerous attacks. At the signing ceremony, Mr Bush could not resist a swipe at Democrats, an indirect shot far short of campaign stump speeches in which he charges they are soft on terrorism.
TimesOnline reports the other side of the bill from a legal angle. The bill strips away the right to challenge detention without charge from all non-US citizens not just those detained outside the U.S but including those within the U.S. This means the CIA can pick anyone up without charges for questioning using torture techniques and not allow him or her to legally challenge the detention in courts. This applies to the 12 million permanent residents who are not citizens. This should be a serious consideration for anyone trying to legally immigrate to the U.S. You just lost another right universally accepted in western society.
Legal challenges saying that it is unconstitutional to remove the right of habeas corpus from anyone are already in train. But the potential application to 12 million people within the US will add political heat that was absent when it covered only 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

November 2006 Visa Bulletin

Every month around the 15th day, the U.S. Dept. of State, releases the visa bulletin which lists who can avail of a visa number next month to adjust status to permanent residency. This bulletin breaks down the numbers based on the category and also separates out over-subscribed countries from the rest of the world. When you apply for permanent residency you get a case number and a priority date. If your priority date is earlier than the date listed in the visa bulletin for your application category, USCIS will proceed with your case and in most cases you will get your permanent resident card in a few months. Here are the cut-off dates for employment-based permanent residency categories from the November 2006 visa bulletin:

For persons born in India:
CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB201 Jan 2003Moved ahead by 6 months
EB322 Apr 2001No change

For persons born in China:

CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB215 Apr 2005Moved ahead by 14 days
EB301 Jul 2002Moved ahead by 2 months

For persons born in Phillipines:
CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB2CurrentNo change
EB301 Jul 2002Moved ahead by 2 months

For persons born in Mexico:
CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB2CurrentNo change
EB308 May 2001Moved ahead by 7 days

For rest of the world:
CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB2CurrentNo change
EB301 Jul 2002Moved ahead by 2 months

Schedule A visa numbers which are used by Nurses and Physical Therapists are now retrogressed to 01-Oct-2005 for all countries. They have been current since Jan 2005 when the current retrogression started.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Pre-PERM rush involved some fraud

The Portland Press Herald recently did a series on immigration to investigate fraud in the H-1B program in Maine. The investigation was triggered when a number of applications for the H-1B and permanent residency programs began to come through the local Labor Department for labor certifications. The investigations discovered a few companies using addresses in Maine to circumvent the prewailing wage criteria for jobs that actually existed in places like New Jersey. Maine is a rural state with very limited high-tech industry with lower wages and such high number of applications was suspect.

As the boxes of paperwork piled up in Maine and other rural states, foreign labor experts came to understand what they were seeing: Small companies moving ahead of federal immigration system changes scheduled for March 28, 2005 (PERM), were flocking to rural states, hoping that their applications for foreign labor would be processed quickly and efficiently.

While both opponents and supporters of the H-1B visa program cannot agree more that abuses should be prevented and punished, the differentiation occurs in how the abuses are presented to the regular folks. The fraud factor is really low here, about 1 percent or so. There's more fraud in Medicare, so should we stop Medicare too? Genuine users of Medicare deserve better if the abuses are detected and stopped. Same is the case with the H-1B. Stop the abuses not the program. Add to this the fact that some politicians use this for fear mongering so prevelant these days.

"I think what your series teaches us is that it isn't enough just to tighten security at our borders, that as long as legitimate visa programs like the H1B program can be so easily manipulated or subjected to outright fraud, that border security - while important - is an incomplete answer," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

"Is it possible to game the system? I guess it is," said Theodore Ruthizer, past president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. "My sense is the allegations of fraud and abuse are way overstated and they're not a serious problem."

Friday, October 06, 2006

Diversity (Lottery) Visa Changes

Here's some news and analysis from a fellow poster at ImmigrationVoice.Org
The entry for the DV 2008 (aka Visa Lottery) commenced yesterday and would run until noon of Dec. 3. While some countries like India and China are not eligible to participate, it is important to point out some changes that might be indicative of what would happen per current immigration legislations.

In the entry form, questions about educational qualifications and country of present residence have been included. These questions have never been asked in the 13 years the visa lottery has been running. I suspect this is anticipatory of the CIR (or some variations or portions of the CIR) being passed before the results of the lottery start to trickle out in April next year. If you all would recall, the dead CIR bill passed by the senate in May had provisions that the Visa Lottery should be modified to reserve 75% of the 55K visas to applicants with advanced degrees and it would be strategic to capture this data in advance in anticipation of legislative changes.

Now, while this is not good news in it self, it could however be that the Dept. of State knows or anticipates that the piece of legislation in question and indeed more immigration legislations would be passed after the November elections and more than likely, before April. I think this is a good pointer for us and we can't but wait to see how things unfold.

In the interim, you can visit http://www.dvlottery.state.gov/ to fill out an application if you are from an eligible country.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Tancredo addresses a hate group

This news is a month old but still important. Tom Tancredo, the number one anti-immigration Congressman (Republican from Colorado) and head of the House Immigration Reform Caucus made an appearance at a gathering organized by a neo-Confederate hate group called League of the South (LOS). SPLC reports on the proceedings:
While Tancredo's hard-line "deport 'em all" stance on immigration has made him a favorite politician of white supremacists, this marked the first time the congressman has appeared at a hate group event.

Tancredo's appearance was part of a five-day sweep through conservative South Carolina, which hosts an early GOP primary and has seen the Southeast's largest percentage gain in foreign-born residents since the 2000 Census. Rising to his friendly audience, Tancredo blasted South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham for being too soft on immigration and basked in the long applause that followed his harangues against illegal immigrants and "the cult of multiculturalism" that glorifies disunity and refuses to acknowledge the "Christian principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution." (Tancredo did not appear to grasp the irony of addressing the "lack of unity" in America in front of a group dedicated to Southern secession.)
Tancredo has expressed his intention to run for the GOP Presedential primary in 2008, I don't think bonding with hate groups is going to be the recipe for success though! Incidents like these will harm his credibility if he's serious about his political future. Last month we witnessed a racial slur from Senator George Allen which maligned his image.
At the close of Tancredo's speech, several men in confederate-themed clothing stood up and bellowed the first notes of "Dixie," the Confederate anthem. They were soon joined by voices from throughout the large hall, which was now entirely on its feet. Tancredo, a second-generation Italian-American from Denver, appeared confused by the sudden burst of strange song. He quickly worked his way toward the exit with his staff.

The truth hurts. Retrogression!

Every once in a while I repost my very first posts just to remind everyone why I started this blog. Please read on...

During the 1990s and through the dot-com boom upto the recession of 2002, a large number of engineers/scientists came to the USA from all over the world. The most popular ways of coming were to come as a skilled-worker(H visa), foreign employee(L visa) or international student(F visa). After coming here, many believed that this was a land of opportunity and wanted to pursue a career and a life here and applied for permanent residency (green card) through one of the employment based(EB) categories. However, the USA only allows a fixed number of employment based immigrants per year. This number is fixed at 140,000 per year since 1990. This number also includes the dependents(spouse and children) of an EB applicant and in addition there is a per-country limit set at 7% of the total. While, most people applied for permanent residency and continued on with their daily lives, they were unaware of a major bottleneck being created in the system which came to light in January 2005. Retrogression!

First there was denial, then there was anger, then frustration. While many went on to hope and prayers, some decided to take matters into their own hands. These are the people of the likes at ImmigrationVoice.Org, who decided to do something to reverse the steady decline of the American dream for the highly educated, skilled individuals or as I like to call them, "the cream of society". These are the people who generate wealth in a economy. They use their brain power to come up with products and innovations that drive companies to profits, driving up the economy and ultimately resulting in employment creation for all. It would seem suicidal for any country to create an atmosphere which discourages these people from migrating to their country. There is already a steady outflux of these PhD holders, Masters' degree holders and others with extensive industry experience from this country out to either competing economies or albeit third world, but fast growing home economies.

So, before you decide to make plans to come here, understand that there is no red carpet welcome here even if you topped your university back home. You will have to work hard for your future and there will be no guarantees of any sorts. I've learnt my lessons the hard way, hope you don't have to do the same. Happy enlightenment!