The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) sent a letter to USCIS today, requesting that the January 8th "Neufeld memo" on the "employer-employee relationship" be withdrawn. In the letter, AILA pointed to four key problems with the memo:
1. The memo is a new policy that is inconsistent with current regulations: The regulations already define "employer" for H-1b context and indicates control when the employer "may hire, pay, fire, supervise, or otherwise control the work of any such employee." The Neufeld memo adds additional requirements beyond what the regulations say.
2. The policy imposes significant economic burdens on business, at time when the government should be trying to encourage business growth: Employers will have to spend considerable time and money gathering additional evidence to file an H-1b petition or respond to a request for evidence. The additional paperwork and increased "unpredictability" of adjudications has a chilling effect on employers who want to hire H-1b workers. Also, AILA pointed to several studies of the positive economic of H-1b employment, including one study that found that "U.S. technology companies increase their employment by an average of five U.S. workers for each H-1b worker they hire."
3. The memo will have serious adverse affects on employers and individuals: AILA pointed to state restrictions on physicians being employed directly by hospitals and to locum tenens and other temporary placement arrangements in the healthcare area (including therapists) where it will be difficult to satisfy the standards of the memo. AILA also pointed to government contracts as not being able to meet the standards. The memo will also negatively affect H-1b workers who file to change employers or extend status, and may have adverse effects on their permanent residence petitions. AILA noted that it is not just the H-1b petitioner and the H-1b worker that are impacted -- the end-users are also effected as they may experience a disruption in work for an H-1b worker that is not able to extend status or when additional staffing is needed.
4. The policy is spreading to other nonimmigrant and immigrant petitions: AILA noted that USCIS has been adjudicating L-1 petitions and I-140 petitions based upon this new, heightened standard of employer-employee relationship.
AILA also re-iterated that the new policy is a violation of the Adminstrative Procedures Act, and urged that the memo be withdrawn immediately.
Hi Sherry,
ReplyDeleteFinally, the healthcare reform bill has been cleared by Congress. Can we assume that the demand for the nurses will increase and as a result will the congress or senatte take up the Nurse Bill in the near future. Your comments will be highly appreciated.
to Rajani:
ReplyDeleteSorry Rajani, there is one thing you can be assure of, dont be fooled by this development. Im very sure that a lot of people will use this as a form of fooling nurses that there is hope for visa to become available. 4 words: dont bet on it!
Rajani,
ReplyDeleteDanillo is almost dead and newly born is Razenger.
Born with envy.
Hi Shalu:
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reminder. Let me ask you a question, how are you now? are you still feeling numb because you are still dreaming to go to America for almost four years now? Delusions can make a lot of things a little bit tipsy. Keep on dreaming. As they say ignorance is a bliss! Such a pity!
And Danilo is not dead he is actually kicking because for 4 years now he is actually very correct. How about you are you correct in any delusions that you have?
hello shalu,
ReplyDeleteI understand your frustrations my dear and you have all the right to feel this but reality bites. I left my country in 06/06 and most of my classmates in nursing school were left behind. Two of them signed up with an agency and they waited from 2006 up to 2008. While waiting, they were lucky to be hired by one of the biggest govt hospitals in our country and got their experience. Finally, when things were really going nowhere they gambled on this agency for Canada and they it paid off. Yes they have paid a lot, NCLEX, CGFNS, Visa screen, english test but they decided to let it go, they can earn back what they spent on these exams. They arrived in Canada i think middle of 2008 (they didn't pay a single cent to get there, the agency took take of it)and the best part is, these classmates of mine were then going steady. To cut the long story short, they are now in Canada, passed the CRNE, have settled in well in their work and the cold weather and this year, they are planning to go home to our country to be married.
This is what I think Danilo and Ramzenger and some other bloggers are trying to relay to other hopeful RNs who would like to work abroad. That the US is not the be all and the end all of things. That some RNs, like me just so happened to be lucky enough to get thru the US nursing doors before they firmly shut close. Sure there is hope that it will open again but the question is when and how will the US gov't open it when they refuse to recapture unused visas and with their own people losing their jobs and not finding any other jobs to help them survive. You have every right to keep hoping, that is your choice, but some bloggers are just expressing their frustrations on how things are going and yes, it does sound discouraging but, well, it is the real ugly truth.
So I guess it just all boils down to luck. You know how the saying goes, "luck is when opportunity is there and you were prepared for it" Like RNs who were all complete with their documents (NCLEX, Visa screens, ielts/toeic, and most importantly a US tourist visa and deep deep pockets to fly to the US asap)were able to get into US find a sponsor before that fateful day of July 30, 2007 when immigration shut their doors and until now have remained closed.
Let us hope that immigration issues will be next on the agenda now that the healthcare bill seems, at the moment, been taken cared of. But just keep your options open and if you see discouraging blogs again, let them alone, you seem to have lots of courage and hope and that is a very good trait. It will get you where you want to go and maybe even better than the US!
Good luck my dear and when God closes a door, somehow He opens a window, problem is, we are just so fixed at staring at the closed door that we didn't see the open window. My classmates did.
some people can have great speeches and some people can somtimes conviNce us wow what amazing things they are doing for a country and so on...still there is absolutely nothing that can justify why a country would accept people to immigrate, by this , installing a " financial process " at every step and at the end blocking the people and once everything is expired they dont feel ashamed at all to ask for money and renewals again. i mean this is to me what i call an immoral trade. regardless which country it can be, no government should be allowed to do this. retrogression? everybody is throwing the ball of responsability on some other...but come on, no economic crisis can justify this cos there is still a nursing shortage and not enough nurses, and the immigration process is filling goverment pockets... so what is it? who decided this? can they come out of the dark and face us and tell us face to face, make a sort of a public announcement and tell us why all this is happening. because we dont want lawyers to tell us , they are with us in the same boat, but what about those guys who decided retrogression can they show themselves and make a statement or are they too ashamed for that? hidding behind i dont what bill from here, this from there, who knows all this blabla they seem expert at !
ReplyDeleteyeah i think i dream too much but my G.od, i have never seen such injustice
what about the people who gave everything they had to pay for CGFNS, NCLEX etc...is this fair ?
anyway, i agree with danillo, ramzenger, dgd etc...and also i dont know from which country they are applying and where they are but all i know is at least they react to this injustice. and this is good
dgd is right, i asked around for canada, it seems that they have more " moral ways when it comes to treat foreign applicants "
now i hear the healthcare reform bill passed, should i be happy or not cos to be honest i have no clue what is going on and why did i lose so much time on all this
regards
nina
I totally agree with dgd. Move to Canada, become a permanent resident for 3 years, get Canadian Citizenship, move to USA on TN1 visa for 3 years and renew it for 3 years till the rest of your life
ReplyDeletesnakerocks,
ReplyDeletethat's exactly what I said to my classmates in Canada. I told them "man, i think I went to the wrong country! You'll get your Canadian immigrant visas soon and here I am, still in limbo in the US waiting for my &#&(#)@&$&!!! greencard! In the meantime all i can do is renew my work permit with USCIS ($380!!!), pay taxes to Uncle Sam with my hard earned dollars and what? Still no greencard!!!" They just laughed at me!
Hi Sherry
ReplyDeleteI thought that because Congress are well aware of the nurse shortage they would have put it all through at the same time as I know that it will take sometime for healthcare reform to kick in now its been signed but it also takes time for immigrants to get there can the USCIS and NVC cope with the extra workload..... They might even be able to recruit which will put American people back to work yipee!!
I agree with you Kerry. Unless the US congress acts now on Nurse Bill and also on producing more RNs within USA, Healthcare facilities in USA will find it difficult to meet the future shortage of RNs. Perhaps, there may no be immediate need of RNs. However, everyone is aware that in the coming years there will be accute shortage of RNs. I do not think not more than 40,000 RNs will be available to come to USA even if the Nurse Bill 60,000 RNs are passed in the near future. That too will be in a span of over 30 months or so.
ReplyDeleteUnless the US Government assures visa will be available, no recruiters, hospitals or a Nurse spends enormous time on study and pay for examination and immigration.
If anyone thinks that US can buy qualified RNs as and when they need, they are wrong.