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I am sure most of you have read the following news item (published on 5/15). If one goes by this, our wait on the resolution for company name change cases can be still longer. The INS spokeswoman does not sound very positive about the portability in S2045 (which is what will help our case). However, given the history of INS, MIRACLES DO HAPPEN like when these provisions were included in S2045....so let\'s keep fingers crossed and hope for the best.....
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INS guidance on U.S. H-1B visas due by early June
---------------------------------------------------------------------By Sonya Hepinstall
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said on Monday that "field guidance" to clarify some parts of new laws on visas for skilled workers, many of them Chinese and Indian high-tech workers, would be issued by early June at the latest.
But full, detailed rules for the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act (AC21) will not be issued until the end of the summer, and even then they will be only "proposed rules," or a rough draft liable to change after consultations that could last months, if not more than a year.
"We are aiming to have field guidance on most of the provisions that would be addressed in regulations out by the end of May or beginning of June," INS spokeswoman Eyleen Schmidt said.
"We are hoping to have the regulations that would address all of the provisions in AC21 by the end of the summer," she added.
Confusion over how the act works in practice has caused great anxiety among people with H-1B visas, as well as those overseas who want to apply for them and the immigration lawyers who have to advise employers and employees alike.
The act, signed into law in October 2000, aimed to improve the program of H-1B visas granted to skilled workers, more than half of which went to the high-technology sector.
More than 40 percent of the beneficiaries typically have come from India, and another 10 percent have been Chinese.
The law increased the number of H-1B visas issued annually to 195,000 for the fiscal years ending September 30, 2001, 2002 and 2003 and also changed many of the rules that governed how the visas could be used, including making them portable from company to company as a worker changed jobs.
Portability has gained in importance with the downturn in the high-tech sector as workers are laid off and seek other jobs while technically having no legal status in the country.
The field guidance, which aims to help the INS employees who decide whether to approve or deny applications, will not deal with portability, Schmidt said.
It will, however, help staffers rule on requests to extend the visas beyond six years, requests that are currently sitting on the shelf, she said.
"The provisions of law that address the extensions were very specific, so it\'s very transparent what the field guidelines would be," Schmidt said.
"The portability was a little more vague, so it was felt that it would be more prudent to go through the rule-making process and allow people to comment."
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