Status
01/24/2006: Senate May Table Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bills As Early As February 2, Thursday
Unconfirmed sources indicate that the Senate may table this bill earlier than expected. Since there is the nightmarish Sensenbrenner border protection bill that will come up with the comprehensive immigration reform legislation, it appears that the pro-immigration forces may have to energize their forces and start working on the critical immigration legislation.
01/24/2006: DOL National Foreign Labor Certification Changes its Web Site Address
Old Address:
www.workforcesecurity.doleta.gov.
New Address:
www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov.
01/24/2006: Bush Reiterates Support for Foreign Workers and Guest Worker Program
Yesterday, in his speech at the Kansas State University, Bush reiterated his support for H-visa programs and guest worker program. He also emphasized that the guest worker program should not include amnesty. For the full text, please click here.
01/22/2006: The Origin of Foreign Students in 2005
In the first week of January 2006, there was the U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education which attracted the political and foreign service leaders to the meeting. For this Summit, the IIE prepared and released information on the foreign students in the United States. This report shed light on the stakeholders of the employment-based immigration issues for the higher level professional occupations.
Generally, about 50% of the graduate students are taken by the foreign students in the U.S. One then wonders where they are comming from. The following table shows the top six countries that sent more than 50% of the total foreign graduate students in 2005.
2000 2005 (% of Total Foreign Students) Graduate Students % of Graduate Students
India 42,337 80,466 (14.2) 57,936 72%
China 54,466 62,523 (11.1) 49,393 79%
Korea 41,191 53,358 (9.4) 24,011 45%
Japan 46,872 42,215 (7.5) 8,443 20%
Canada 23,544 28,140 (5.0) 13,225 47%
Taiwan 29,234 25,914 (4.6) 14,771 57%
The number of Indian students almost doubled in five years and dominated the graduate level students in the absolute numbers. It is followed by the Chinese students. Accordingly, any nonimmigrant (such as U.S. advanced degree 20,000 H-1B visas) or immigrant (such as EB-1 and EB-2) visa issues related to the advanced degree professionals are more or less more closely tied to the Indians and Chinese than other nationals. According to the report, 25% of the total foreign students studied engineering, particularly computer science related engineering and 18% of the total foreign students studied business and management. Obviously, the graduate level foreign students from India and China focused on the engineering. For the full text of the report, please click here.
01/21/2006: Republican National Committee Resolution: Support Legal Immigration & Guest Worker Program, Oppose Legalization
Report indicates that the Republican National Committee voted on 01/20/2006 to back the Bush's call for a guest-worker program, and adopted a resolution that calls for continued "legal immigration," criticizes illegal immigration and endorses a "new work program for foreign workers," but states there should be "no amnesty for those persons presently in the United States illegally." Read on.
There are several Comprehensive Immigration Reform bills pending in the Senate. The Senate is expected to return to the Hill next month and the specific agenda for the debate of these conflicting bills have yet to be announced by Sen. Bill Frist. He previously announced that these bills would be tabled for the debate in February. Please stay tuned to this website for the upcoming comprehensive immigration reform debates in the Hill. These bills are expected to bring a reform in the employment-based immigration increasing the employment-based immigrant visa numbers substantially. There are no strong opposition to this part of the comprehensive immigration reform.
