News Update - May 11, 2010
By Alan Lee, Esq.†‡
H-1B Cap Outlook And New Bill To Strip Away U.S. Citizenship
It may interest potential employers to know that the H-1B cap count as of May 6, 2010, is 25,600 petitions filed against an overall cap of 85,000. That means that there is much room for new H-1B petitions for employment beginning on October 1st. Although we believe that the H-1B quota will last for a number of months, it is always best to begin new H-1B petitions as soon as the candidates are identified. We have begun to hear murmurs that job hiring is picking up, especially in the IT sector. The IT sector is largely seen as the leading user of H-1B visas.
Who can forget incidents like the security guard in Atlanta mistaken for a bomber at the beginning of the Olympic Games in that city, the South American mistakenly gunned down by British police on suspicion of being a subway bomber, or the Middle Eastern student in a hotel near the World Trade Center mistakenly accused of using a radio to guide the 9/11 attacks on New York? Yet under the Terrorist Expatriation Act co-sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-Ct.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Americans suspected of allying themselves with terrorists could have their citizenship status revoked. The bill would allow the State Department to revoke the citizenship of people providing support to terrorist groups or who attack the United States or its allies. In practice, a diplomatic or consular official prepares a certificate of loss of citizenship and forwards it to the State Department, which then makes an official determination. If it concludes that renunciation was effective, the person has one year to appeal the loss of citizenship. This is hasty and ill thought legislation and a knee-jerk reaction to the attempted New York Times Square bombing last week. And what about persons contributing to charities that they believe are legitimate, but turn out to funnel some funds to fronts of terrorist organizations? They would be vulnerable under the bill's inclusion of persons "Providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization". Further any American providing a one night crash pad for someone later labeled a terrorist could be included under the same rubric. There does not appear to be justification for stripping away U.S. citizenship from "suspects" who may ultimately be vindicated if given the chance to defend themselves in a U.S. court of law. U.S. citizenship is a precious right, and the constitutionality of the law is certainly questionable in light of Supreme Court rulings that expatriation requires the individual's assent before citizenship can be relinquished and that in the last analysis, expatriation depends on the will of the citizen rather than on the will of Congress and its assessment of his conduct.
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