Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Visa Bulletin - September 2008

The visa bulletin is available here http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin_4357.html

E.
EMPLOYMENT VISA AVAILABILITY
Item E of the May 2008 Visa Bulletin (number 118, volume VIII) indicated that many Employment cut-off dates had been advancing very rapidly, based on indications that the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) would need to review a significantly larger pool of applicants than there were numbers available in order to maximize number use under the FY-2008 annual limits. That item also indicated that if the CIS projections proved to be incorrect, it would be necessary to adjust the cut-off dates during the final quarter of FY-2008. The CIS estimates have proven to be very high resulting in: 1) the “unavailability” of all Employment Third preference categories beginning in July, 2) the “unavailability” of numbers for China and India Employment Second preference adjustment of status cases during September, and 3) the establishment of many October Employment cut-off dates which are earlier than those which applied during FY-2008.

Little if any forward movement of the cut-off dates in most Employment categories is likely until the extent of the CIS backlog of old priority dates can be determined. It is estimated that the FY-2009 Employment-based annual limit will be very close to the 140,000 minimum.

FAIR against legal immigration as well!

The FAIR gang is out again with anti-immigration action alerts. Here's their latest. This shows that they make no distinction between legal and illegal immigration even though this bill doesn't add any new visa numbers but only reuses those that were wasted because of bureaucratic delays. Here's what they say:

House Judiciary Renews Consideration of Measures That Will Harm American Workers
FAIR Action Alert
Thanks to your calls and e-mails last week, efforts to pass four detrimental immigration-related bills stalled in the House Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, victory was short-lived. Committee leaders remain committed to passing these bills, which would flood the workplace with hundreds of thousands of worker visas.
The Judiciary Committee is meeting again Wednesday, September 17th for another try!

Three of the four bills to be considered in Wednesday's markup amount to nothing more than gifts to big business special interests seeking to dramatically increase the stream of cheap foreign labor coming into the American workforce during these tough economic times:

  • H.R. 5882 would reach back to 1992 and "recapture" employment-based and family-based visas, potentially adding over 550,000 new green cards.
  • H.R. 5924 would lift the cap on employment-based visas for nurses and physical therapists until 2011.
  • H.R. 6020 would grant amnesty to illegal aliens who are family members of armed forces personnel.