Hammond Law Group, LLC

According to the National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses (NACCB), the drop in IT employment improved during the month of February 2009.  After months of falling sharply (down by 56,000 jobs in December 2008 and 46,000 jobs in January 2009), February saw a loss of only 17,000 jobs.  CEO of NACCB, Mark Roberts states “when you dig beneath the national numbers, the landscape is far more complex.  There are still pockets of relative strength in IT employment in certain geographic regions, industries, and skill sets.”  To view NACCB’s IT employment index, please visit www.naccb.org/employment-index/index.cfm. 

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an op-ed  which joined the chorus of criticism against the anti-H-1b provisions in the stimulus bill.  The article, written by the dean and two associate deans from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of business not only points out how damaging the provision is to banks trying to stay competitive, but also looks farther down the road and sees a day where bright foreign students opt not to stay in America’s class rooms and companies but instead look for easier roads to gainful employment.

Last Friday, CNBC’s Kudlow Report interviewed Senator Grassley regarding his stance on the H1b issue.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?play=1&video=1054991891

In the report entitled “Fire Foreigners First” Senator Grassley commented that he had two goals with regards to reforming the H1b program: 1. to eliminate the fraud in the program, which he mentioned involved employees being listed on the H1b application as working in one location, when in reality they were working in another location, and 2. to make sure US businesses are making a Good Faith effort to seek US workers for the position before hiring H1b workers. When Kudlow then asked the Senator to explain how this stance plays into the fact that we have a skill shortage, the Senator responded that the H-1(b) program was not promulgated for competition purposes but rather to address a need and it was the responsibility of the US businesses to show that there were no US workers available to address this need. In closing the Senator admitted that he is in favor of legal immigration stating, “this country is great because of its diversity”, but that there are laws that must be followed. 

The Senator’s statements in this report seem to indicate that the USCIS investigations into the “fraud” will be on the rise in the coming months.

The New York Times has a nice piece on the real world effects of the protectionist language in the new stimulus bill:  “Absent precise regulations, which have yet to be issued, big banks are being forced to re-examine the hundreds of students that many of them would normally add to their training classes at the end of the academic year.”  In effect, at a time when US financial institutions are struggling to compete in a global market, they find themselves with another hurdle to overcome.

For any of you plagued by long pending name checks at the I-485 stage, you’re not going to like this news! 

Last year on Feb. 4, 2008, USCIS issued a memo to all Service Centers stating that if the FBI name check in an I-485 case (and a few specific other types of cases) was pending for more than 180 days and that was only reason it had not yet been approved, the Service should automatically approve it.  They of course reserved the right to revoke the “green card” if derogatory information later surfaced.  USCIS seemed to follow this memo closely for a few months and then seemed to slow again on long-pending cases.  Now the Service has officially backtracked and issued a memo revoking the “automatic approval” provisions.  USCIS must now contact the FBI to ensure the name check has cleared in I-485 cases before approval. 

 They claim the FBI’s average processing time is now 90 days. 

 Please see below for a copy of the new memo revoking the previous FBI Memo. (Thanks to ILW for its original post.) http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/news/2009,0305-neufeld.pdf

the New York Times   cites a study out today which speaks to the benefit highly skilled workers have on the US economy.  In  reference to the H-1b language in the stimulus bill, the paper states: “The real worry should not be smart foreigners coming to take jobs in America…but all the bright, ambitious immigrants who are leaving the United States and returning home, especially to India and China.”