Critical Immigration Debate in U.S. Senate

On Monday, October 31st, the Senate began consideration of the budget reconciliation bill, which includes a proposal that would provide temporary relief from the H-1B visa blackout and employment-based immigrant visa backlogs, in exchange for increased fees on some petitions (see http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?docid=17779). As we have been reporting to you, last July the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stopped accepting any more H-1B applications for Fiscal Year 2006, which just started last month on October 1st. In the vast majority of cases, no new H-1B visas are available until October 1, 2006! This is not right when a U.S. company needs to hire the talent it requires to remain competitive. Compounding this is the backlog in immigrant visas, which has a large segment of foreign national workers waiting years in a queue before they are eligible to file a final green card application.