News Update - May 13, 2011

By Alan Lee, Esq.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg's Suggestion to Exchange 5 or 10 Year Residence in Detroit or Other Declining Industrial City for Green Card Neither Unrealistic nor Inhumane; H-1B Numbers Down - Employers and Applicants Appear to Have Much Time to Submit Petitions.

On Sunday's "Meet the Press" of May 1st, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed that to populate industrial cities like Detroit which are losing substantial numbers of people, a law could be passed to allow in immigrants who would live there for 5 or 10 years.  This proposal appears to have sparked negative responses from ludicrous to unrealistic to being against human-rights to not being able to create jobs since people are leaving because of no jobs.  Yet Mayor Bloomberg is correct.  His experience in New York City alone informs him that immigrants can revitalize a metropolis with dwindling population.  Immigrants have vitality and new ideas and draw on themselves, families, friends, and their immigrant communities for the capital to begin new businesses.  The idea is also extremely humane and very fair to exchange green cards for living 5 or 10 years in a blighted city.  Many potential immigrants live in much worse conditions than Detroit in their home countries.  The rub would be for the federal government to periodically check on the people to ensure that they are indeed living in Detroit or other declining city instead of only using it as an address or living there part time.  A fair amount of spot check auditing would be warranted instead of the program participant merely submitting paperwork with the possibility of a formal interview at the end of a period of conditional residence.  A hefty fee for applying under the program would allow U.S.C.I.S.'s Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) or other investigative unit the wherewithal with which to conduct the audits. 

You may have noticed that we have not yet begun talking about the H-1B cap count for FY-2012 which began on April 1, 2011.  That is because of a lack of eventfulness on that score.  No one need experience angst over the count as the number of filed H-1B petitions at this point is much lower than last year's count  - down approximately one-third.  With the cap count of April 29, 2011, 15,800 H-1B petitions had been filed, divided into 9200 regular petitions and 6600 petitions under the U.S. Masters or higher degree cap.  In last year's cap count of April 27, 2010, 23,400 petitions had already been filed, 16,500 regular ones and 6900 under the U.S. Masters or higher degree cap.  So at this time, there is not much demand for H-1B numbers and applicants and organizations should not feel undue pressure or a sense of panic in preparing and sending out petitions.

 


The author is a 30+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

This article © 2011 Alan Lee, Esq.

 

Copyright © 2003-2012 Alan Lee, Esq.
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