This week I am writing this column from the American Bar Association’s (ABA) annual meeting in Atlanta, GA. ABA is one of the largest voluntary professional organizations in the world and is the primary stake holder in matters involving the legal profession, and legal matters in general. One of the hot-topics this year was the much-discussed detainee rights in the war against terror. ABA has taken lots of heat this year in advocating legal rights to detainees regardless of nationality.

Another interesting session I attended was about outsourcing and off-shoring. This is another hot-topic, which involves lots of immigration issues. Outsourcing is contracting out a usually non-core function of a company to an outside source. Off-shoring, on the other hand, is carrying certain functions of a business overseas by creating a new corporate entity overseas. There was intense debate about outsourcing and off-shoring in the last year and it will be a hot-topic during the elections.

One of the interesting things I learned was the definition of “deemed exports” in the context of Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Under EAR, any release of technology (software, technical data, etc.) to a foreign person, regardless of place, is an export. A foreign person is defined as someone who is not a US citizen, a dual-citizen of the US, a lawful permanent resident, or an asylee or refugee. Therefore, release of technology to a H-1b, L-1A, E-1, J-1, F-1, etc. holder in the US (the person does not have to be outside of the US) can still deemed to be an export. One of the groups that were discussed in this session were the IT administrators on H-1b visas in US businesses. If the person has unlimited access to the company’s technical data and if that data is listed under the EAR or other export licenses, then the company may have to obtain an “export license” to cover this person in all technologies and items listed under the “Commerce Control List”.

Those readers who hire foreign nationals in non-immigrant categories who have access to significant technical data of a US employer, or readers who are hired in non-immigrant categories and have unlimited or significant access to their company’s technical data, may be effected by EAR and the licensing requirements. This was news to me and found it very interesting and wanted to share it with our readers. I, as an immigration attorney, am not familiar with the details of EAR and the licenses, but if you think you may be effected, it will be a good idea to check these issues with your company’s general counsel or with a competent export and international trade attorney.

Issues like outsourcing, employment visas and other employment related immigration issues will be hot-topics in this year’s election. We will try to keep you updated on emerging issues in our weekly “Campaign 2004” section.

This week we are offering an ABC’s article on the P visas for athletes and entertainers. It is a very interesting visa category and we hope you will enjoy reading it. We are also reporting the termination of the crew list visa program and the extension of the temporary protected status (TPS) for Somalia. Also, we just received news of the termination of the TPS program for the nationals of Montserrat. Currently there are a little under 300 citizens of Montserrat in the temporary protected status in the US. TPS was granted due to volcanic activity in this island. DHS announced today that they will terminate the program by February 2005. We will have more information about this next week.

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