The Senate is expected to take up the measure on December 9, 2016, and President Obama is expected to sign the measure once it clears the Senate

H-1B is the visa classification given to Professional employees to come work in US Companies. Although all types of professions use this visa, the vast majority of these visas are used by computer consulting companies for computer professionals. The end user is the place that the computer professional will actually work. Usually these are big companies. These companies contract out their work, and sometimes the intermediary companies enter into contracts with others. Thus very often the company employing the H-1B worker has one or more intermediaries between them and the end client. The petitioning consulting companies (hereinafter petitioner) often change the employees resumes to suit a job, although the employee may not have that skill. This can be stopped if the end client can have a testing requirement to before accepting someone for the job. Initially it will be a burden to devise these tests, but then, that will ensure that their work is done in an efficient way.

But the real problem is that there is a quota of 65,000 visas per year for H-1Bs (plus 20K for those who have US Masters) and there are more than 233,000 petitions filed on the first day in 2015. So the Citizenship and Immigration Service does a random lottery and the lucky 85 K get in. Then the Citizenship and Immigration Service takes a long time to adjudicate these cases, and often it’s January of the following year that the employee can get in and start working Thus employers have to calculate their need and apply with projected rather than actual figure. Since these visas lead to Green Card (Permanent Resident Card), they are coveted by employees. Thus many employees seek employers to enter the lottery. The employees often pay money to the employers to enter the lottery, which is of course against the law. The employers then file for the H-1B lottery for these employees. By the time the employee can make it to the United States, the project that was originally applied for has already been completed.
Do H-1B employees take American jobs? Please note that the Government fees for H-1B is 1575 to 4325 USD- per individual. Add attorney’s fees to that. The Employer has to pay the employee at least the Prevailing Wage, which is often higher than local employees’ pay. And even if it’s the same wage for three years, its still the same as an American worker. But we do have computer science graduates in this country. They do not want to lead the lifestyle of the computer consultant. The computer consultant is like a travelling Computer guru, who moves from project to project. They may stay in Memphis for 6 months, followed by Iowa City for 3 mts, followed by Houston for 5 mts. You get the picture. They cannot have roots anywhere. If they have families, the family has to be positioned in some place, and they usually go back for the week end. But to make up for it, they work 12 hour days from Monday to Thursday. It’s just a hard life that Comp Sci grads from this country simply do not want.

Thus the solutions to these problems are:
1. Do away with the H-1B quota and let the market dictate need:
The market is a much better predictor of demand than an artificial quota. The quota forces employers to project their need for a whole year and file accordingly. It also creates uncertainly because of the lottery and creates artificial demand. Very often the petitioner just has one or two big project and file 20 cases, even though the need maybe 5. They hope that at least 5 people get picked. This of course leads to fraudulent practices. And there can be no guarantee which employee will be lucky enough to get in. Without the quota the optimally qualified available personnel, rather than the lucky personnel will get the job.

2. Create a system whereby the HR director of the end user has to verify the employment of the employee
The Department of Labor, to end fraud in the Labor Certification program established a system where the Company has to verify that the Labor certification is a real job that does exist in the Company. The Citizenship and Immigration service is testing an employer verification system. But they need to create a simple program whereby the system sends out an e mail asking if this job exist. The adjudication (which needs to be done fast) will proceed upon a yes answer. If the e mail is fraud, then the petitioner will be barred from using the H-1B program again, and the end user will pay a fine.

3. Do Away with Control and Simeio issues:
The Obama administration created complex and useless rules to curb H-1B fraud which do not work. In 2010, the Citizenship and Immigration Service issued a memo that said these professional employees need to be “controlled”. The Government tried to say that if the petitioner does not control the employee, then they are not the Employer. The Government then proceeded to introduce this requirement ONLY to the computer consulting industry, and not to the healthcare industry, which employ the same model. Just a simple e mail from the end user should suffice. The “control” issue goes into the business model of this industry, over which the Citizenship and Immigration Service does not have jurisdiction.

Similarly in a 2015 case, Simeio, the ruling was that if an H-1B employee changes job location, the employer has to file an H-1B petition. As mentioned above these H-1B employees change job locations very frequently. Thus the Immigration Service is inundated with the H-1B petitions. The Government is taking almost a year to adjudicate these petitions. By then the employee has moved three times, making the adjudication of two of these petitions moot and a waste of time.
These two measures are quixotic and serve no purpose other than to harass employers and make attorneys rich. In order to curb fraud, the system should be made simple, hassle free and fast to keep pace with the for profit industry. Otherwise the Immigration code will quickly grow into something like the tax code, complex and filled with loop holes.

For more information contact Houston Immigration attorney, Annie Banerjee

HR 156 bars visa waiver country citizens from using the vis waiver program if they have traveled to Iraq or Syria within the last 5 years.

In the EB-5 area, there are 5 different, proposed legislative changes to the program which address many components of the EB-5 program, including increases in the minimum investment amount, making the program permanent, changing job creation methodology, changing TEA designations and definitions, and addressing means to reduce and identify fraud in Regional Centers and regional center projects.

Stay tuned for an update for news about Congressional decisions on these issues.

First, HR 969 (the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act) was introduced in February of this year and it has considerable bi-partisan support. The bill would include as part of the Republic of Vietnam its “territorial seas” for purposes of the presumption of service-connection for diseases associated with exposure by veterans to certain herbicide agents while in Vietnam.

As the bill’s sponsor, Representative Christopher Gibson (R-NY) said, this legislation, “places Navy Personnel on the same playing field as those who served on Vietnamese territory during the war – it’s the right thing to do.” We couldn’t agree more!

Rep. Gibson also noted that the bill would reduce the tremendous backlog of VA claims for veterans suffering from diseases the government links to Agent Orange.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced S-681 just last week in the Senate. That legislation is the Senate companion to the House bill and it would further clarify the service-connection presumption for Blue Water Navy veterans.

You can check out the Blue Water Navy Awareness Blog here: http://bluewaternavyawarenss.blogspot.com/

And we join the group in their call for you and your neighbors to contact your representatives and senators and urge them to support this legislation. It is very encouraging that these bills have bi-partisan sponsors and support, but similar legislation in the past has fallen victim to the dreadfully slow legislative process and died while in committee – where these two bills currently remain.

At Legal Help For Veterans, PLLC, we focus exclusively on veterans’ rights. If you are a veteran looking to get the benefits that you deserve, call us today at 1-800-693-4800. We handle a variety of claims, including Agent Orange and other service-connected injuries. www.LegalHelpForVeterans.com

Legal Help for Veterans, PLLC fights for veterans rights. We fight to make sure you get the benefits you deserve from the Department of Veterans Affairs. To learn more or contact a veterans attorney, visit http://www.legalhelpforveterans.com/ or call 800.693.4800

The key points in the new package include a $15 billion budget boost to the VA, a “Veterans Choice Card,” and, potentially, leases on 27 new medical centers in fifteen states and Puerto Rico (another $1.27 billion).

The centerpiece of the “Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act” (HR 3230) is a $10 billion Veterans Choice Fund. Over the next three years, VA is to use the fund to buy care from non-VA care providers for veterans if they face long waits longer than 30 days for VA care or if they reside more than 40 miles from a VA medical center.

The goal: to eliminate the egregiously long VA patient wait list, which some VA health administrators and staffed conspired to hide in recent years.

Per the request of some VA leaders and veteran service organizations, HR 3230 also authorizes $5 billion for VA to expand its own capacity to deliver care, by hiring more medical and support staff and also building and leasing more space. This $5 billion will be paid for by cuts elsewhere, including cuts to executive bonuses and deferring planned rate cute for certain VA home loans.

However, the “Veterans Choice Card,” which the legislation mandates, is not the golden ticket that it sounds like for veterans seeking outside care. Veterans not already enrolled in VA health care won’t gain accelerated access to outside care as promised by the legislation, unless they serve in areas of combat operations within five years of enrollment.

The choice card will mostly act as an informational insurance card presented to non-VA health care providers to identify the veteran and to verify eligibility for care that, sometime earlier, were arranged through and approved by a VA coordinator.

Also, not all eligible veterans will get to choose their outside provider, and not every outside provider will opt to treat veterans through the VA coordinated care program – even if the vets are existing patients. The issues for outside physicians include the level and timeliness of VA payments. The new legislation does include language seeking to improve VA payment procedures so that payments are timelier.

VA has existing contracts with individual physicians and with pools of private sector providers, and additional similar arrangements are expected. But, VA cannot pay rates higher than Medicare allows, with exceptions possible if care is delivered in rural areas.

Many question marks remain with this legislation and how it might be implemented. It certainly does not represent a cure-all for the VA’s problems, however it does include some near-term action. You can read more on this story in Stars & Stripes: http://www.stripes.com/news/veterans/how-choice-card-and-15b-will-help-veterans-get-care-1.296110

Legal Help for Veterans, PLLC fights for veterans rights. We fight to make sure you get the benefits you deserve from the Department of Veterans Affairs. To learn more or contact an attorney about your PTSD, TBI, Mental Health, Sexual Assault, Hearing Loss and Tinnitus, TDIU, Medical Malpractice, or Aid and Attendance claim, visit http://www.legalhelpforveterans.com/ or call 800.693.4800