This week, Congress approved the Justice Department appropriations bill for fiscal year 2003, which began this week. Included within the bill are a number of immigration related provisions.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who in 1996 not only chaired the House Immigration Subcommittee, but was also a driving force behind many of the most restrictive provisions of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, sponsored a provision that will grant a seventh year on H-1B status to nonimmigrants for who an application for a labor certification was filed before the end of their fifth year of H-1B status.
Under current law, for the employee to be eligible for an extension, the immigrant petition that is based on an approved labor certification be filed before the end of the six-year limit, and that the labor certification have taken more than a year to process. In commenting on his proposal, Rep. Smith observed that in the time since Congress first created a provision for the extension of H-1B visas beyond six years, labor certification processing at both the state and federal levels has actually gotten worse.
The bill makes some changes to the immigrant investor program, which are discussed elsewhere in the newsletter.
The bill extends the deadline for family members of noncitizens who died while serving in US military actions to apply for posthumous citizen. It also allows a child’s grandparent or legal guardian to file an application for naturalization on behalf of the child if the child’s parent died in the five preceding years.
Finally, the bill reauthorizes the Conrad program authorizing states to sponsor J-1 waivers for physicians until 2004, and raises the number of physicians that may be sponsored from 20 to 30.
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