Openers
Dear
Readers:
This
week we present a special issue covering the passage of HR 4337 in the US House
of Representatives. The bill focuses entirely on enforcement and contains a
number of controversial provisions that we discuss in this issue of the
newsletter. The bill is frightening in many regards even though we expect cooler
heads to prevail in the Senate and for this bill to be summarily rejected by the
upper chamber of Congress.
The
bill’s sponsors used the strategy of introducing and passing the legislation
with lightning speed. Immigrant rights organizations had little time to organize
and oppose the bill. The bill was introduced and passed in just over a week, a
speed virtually unheard of in the history of immigration legislation.
The
provision of the bill that is perhaps the most controversial is the
criminalization of being out of status in the
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While
the House of Representatives was passing a truly frightening piece of
legislation, it apparently also managed to derail inclusion of H-1B and
Employment Based green card quota relief in a bill that had already passed the
Senate and needed to be reconciled with a House version of the bill.
The
Senate version would have freed up to 300,000 H-1B visas and 90,000 green cards
and made other changes that would have reduced problems created by the backlogs
in the non-immigrant and immigrant visa programs.
While
the immigration provisions are not officially dead, they’re definitely on
life-support and proponents of the legislation are already trying to find a new
legislative strategy.
The
bill did contain language that closed what little remaining access immigrants
had to Medicaid health coverage. Since the 1996 Welfare Act, immigrants have
been barred from most public benefits.
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In
firm news, this past week I was a speaker at the annual meeting of the New York
Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. I spoke on using the
Internet in preparing immigration cases and used an H-1B case as a hypothetical.
I received a number of requests for my outline for my presentation and would be
happy to share it with any attorney readers who are interested. Just email me at
gsiskind@visalaw.com.
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Readers
who have subscribed to this newsletter for many of our 11 year history know that
a few times a year our publication schedule becomes a little erratic. One of
those times is around the end of the year when our staff tend to take off time
for holiday travel. And we also know our readers are doing the same. We’ll be
back at the beginning of January and wish all of our readers a happy holiday
season.
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As
always, we remind readers that we're lawyers who make our living representing
immigration clients and employers seeking to comply with immigration laws. We
would love to discuss becoming your law firm. Just go to
http://www.visalaw.com/intake.html to request an appointment or call us at
Regards,
Disclaimer: This newsletter is provided as a public service and not intended to establish an attorney client relationship. Any reliance on information contained herein is taken at your own risk.