It is true...
Spidey and all,
Sorry for posting this late but this news is real and SJC (Senate Judiciary Committee) has passed this yesterday.
That said it has to be formally passed through both houses and signed by president before becoming law. But since this is a bipartisan bill, we hope it pass through the senate smoothly.
The biggest news for our friends (who are still in BECs) is to be able to file 485 even if the dates are not current.
Here are some highlights of the bill which was passed yesterday:
10/21/2005: AILA Confirms Following Details of Senate Judiciary Approvals Yesterday
According to the AILA, AILA has passed the following immigration proposals yesterday:
Impose a new $500 fee on immigrant visa petitions for the EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 categories.
Recapture unused employment-based visas from prior years for immediate allocation of up to 90,000/year. (Estimates indicate there are only 90,000-100,000 unused numbers to be tapped.)
Exempt spouses and minor children from counting against the annual cap on employment-based immigrant visas. (Estimates are that this would lead to an annual increase of 80,000-90,000 employment-based immigrant visas.)
Allow individuals to apply for adjustment of status before an immigrant visa is deemed currently available. (Of course, approval could not occur until the visa number is available.)
Recapture approximately 300,000 unused H-1B numbers dating back to FY 1991. As a result of Senator Feinstein's amendment, 30,000 rather than 60,000 would be available annually. (In other words, effectively raising the cap from 65,000 to 95,000 for at least 10 years.)
Impose a new fee on the recaptured H-1B visas so that the fees on the original 65,000 H-1B allotment remain unchanged but the additional 30,000 available annually carry an additional $500 fee.
Impose a new $750 fee on L-1 visas. (This was part of Senator Feinstein's amendment and was necessary to offset the reduction in revenue resulting from the limitation on recaptured H-1B numbers from 60,000 to 30,000.)
We agree with the AILA that these are not final bills and we have a long way to go to make these proposals into a reality. Businesses, academic institutions, and other stakeholders should keep working with their Congressional representatives to support the Senate Judiciary bill.
Have a nice week-end,
MD2001
spidey said:
Hey MD2001
Provided this news is reliable. This is indeed very good news.... One can only hope the effects will trickle down right away.
Here's are the specific parts that I find VERY VERY agreeable. Both put together actually end up increasing Employment Based visa numbers significantly....
Among the specifics of the measure approved today, the following are critical to easing visa shortage, while raising significant Federal revenue:
o The measure would "recapture" employment-based (green card) immigrant visa numbers that were available by statute but unused in previous years due to processing backlogs, and make them available again at a rate of up to 90,000 per year;
o The measure would provide that only employment-based immigrants, and not their spouses and children, would count toward the annual limit on employment-based immigration; and
Depending on how the 90,000 new visa numbers was calculated we either have a total gain of 90,000 OR much more.... Here's what I mean.
If approval was given for 90,000 new visa numbers per year, accounting for the 2nd measure it actually means 90,000 * 2.2 = 200,000 new visa numbers are now available.
It also means that the original 140,000 also gets similarly multiplied.
This is because upto now the total visa numbers were accounted for by counting spouse and children usage as well.. the multiplier was 2.2 (I could be mistaken about that multiplier but thats what I think it was)
All in all if this is how you have to count these numbers then we suddenly from 140,000 visa numbers per year we are looking at a total of:
140,000 * 2.2 = 350,000 + 200,000 = 550,000 visa numbers per year.
Now.. reason tells me that is probably too good to be true. Therefore the original 90,000 new visa numbers must already account for this math giving us a net gain of 90,000 new visa numbers which I suspect in itself is enough for this group.....
This is indeed good news assuming it's not wrong news. Stay tuned, I am sure we'll hear more in coming weeks.
). BTW, as I was reading previous threads, it seems that comparing dates is not enough because of the retrogression issue. Maybe we could indicate that in our signatures. For example, I am from France which I don't believe is affected by retrogression...