Friday, March 02, 2007

March Visa Bulletin

The reason I didn't blog the March visa bulletin is simple, it's exactly the same as the February visa bulletin. Absolutely no movement in any of the employment-based visa dates. So the USCIS is telling each of the half a million applicants, please wait another month to see if there is any change. What a joke! I can't believe this is supposed to be the most advanced nation in the world. If the USCIS were a company, they would be bankrupt by now!

Update on the Developer position

It's now over three months since we started the job search. We had a candidate last week, who also got two other offers in much bigger firms. Come on all you unemployed, under employed programmers/developers, where are you? Ron Hira would like us to believe there are plenty of them but we can't find any!

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Labor substitution to be eliminated

The U.S. Department of Labor(DOL) is planning to eliminate a provision whereby companies who filed for Labor Certification for a candidate could replace it with another candidate. This may seem as if DOL is getting strict, but the fact is that companies use the approved labor certs to lure new candidates or even sell it to unscrupulous elements when the person for whom the original labor cert was filed is no longer with the company. With the backlog elimination expected to be completed by September, there are going to be a lot of older labor certs approved where the person is now no longer with the company. It is only fair for the people waiting in the retrogression queue to get the visa numbers before new candidates are sold these approved certs with earlier priority dates.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill

It's round two of the CIR bill drama. Senator Kennedy (D-MA) is planning to introduce the bill in the Senate this month with most of the action due in April. Watch for more anti-immigrant rhetoric appearing among the "Faux" news crowd. Last time around, the Senate had passed the bill by a majority (and the Indian news media celebrated as if it was already a law!), but the bill was left in the dust by the House Republicans. It was election year and no one wanted to get caught with mud on their hands. This time around it's a different story, the Democrats control the House and the Republications who did the maximum mud-slinging, all lost their seats. It would be interesting to see what Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Co. do this time to stop this bill from being passed.