~~~ H-1B Newsflash  ~~~

Update: February 9th, 2000

Senators Hatch and Abraham have just introduced the proposed bill to raise the annual H-1B cap (American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000) to 195,000. In addition, the bill would eliminate quotas by country in EB categories, would allow certain H-1B visa holders to extend their six year limits and would permit, under legitimate circumstances, H-1B applicants to change employers as soon as applications are submitted, as opposed to waiting for approval.

H-1B Cap Bill (PDF copy)   |  H-1B Cap Bill (Retyped)

Recent Article On Ambiguous Status of H-1Bs

Siskind's H-1B Emergency Update
Advisories and updates.

Shusterman's H-1B Visa Page
Key links and timely articles.

January 12th, 2000

Staff members with the Senate Judiciary Committee are indicating that Senators Hatch and Abraham plan to move a bill through the Judiciary Committee next month and prepare for a Senate vote by early spring.

The bill in question would provide for an additional 40,000 - 50,000 H1B numbers over and above the existing 115,000 during this fiscal year and the next. In addition, the bill proposes to exempt the following visas from the cap: those for employees of higher education institutions and affiliated research and non-profit organizations. In addition, the per country limitation would reportedly be lifted since there is no per country limitation for H-1B visas.

This would seem to insinuate the elimination of the country quotas for EB immigrant visas: A godsend for H1B visa holders from India and China, the two countries most affected by the per country limitation. Amidst recent State Department predictions of EB2 and EB3 backlogs soon to come, this bill is especially welcome!

Info sources: AILA and Carl Shusterman, Esq., with promises of more details to come at Shusterman.com.                                    

&