Wall Street Journal
By Dhanya Ann Thoppil
May 29, 2015
Does
this week’s federal court ruling upholding a stay on some of President
Barrack Obama’s immigration reform plans affect changes for those on
high-skilled worker visas
in the United States?
The short answer is no.
The
court’s decision stops the Obama administration from proceeding with
its plan to allow more than four million people residing in the country
illegally to apply for
deferred deportation and work authorizations, among other benefits. The
administration says it will continue to pursue a separate legal appeal
to try to move forward with the plans.
Tuesday’s
ruling though will not affect initiatives for skilled workers, because
the lawsuit only pertained to the program that shielded millions from
deportation, said
Scott J. FitzGerald, a partner at U.S.-based international law firm
Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP.
The president in November bypassed Congress to unveil the immigration reforms.
The
changes included allowing the spouses of certain H1-B visa holders to
work in the U.S., reducing the time taken to issue green cards and
issuing guidelines on how
to successfully apply for an L-1 visa used by employers for
intra-company employee transfers.
The
president’s basket of executive actions was welcomed by India’s
outsourcing technology industry, which earns billions of dollars sending
Indian engineers and programmers
to the U.S. and has been demanding America raise the ceiling on the
number of skilled-worker visas it issues every year.
Some
of the measures announced under the reforms have already been rolled
out. A rule that allows people with H-4, dependent-spouse visas with
partners seeking employment-based,
permanent residence status, to work in the U.S., came into effect
earlier this week.
In
April, a group of technology workers under the banner Save Jobs, USA,
filed a preliminary injunction in a federal court in Columbia seeking to
block the new rule that
allows H-4 spouses to work in the U.S. The lawsuit alleged that the
U.S. department of labor has no statutory authority to allow foreigners
to work on H-4 visas and has circumvented the rules.
The court denied the motion earlier this week.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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