Articles Posted in Work Visas

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued a new edition of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. The new form will take effect on February 2, 2009 and should not be used before that date. Until February 2, employers should continue to use the June 5, 2007 edition of the form. Both editions of the form are available at http://www.uscis.gov/i-9.

Revised Document List

The I-9 form was changed to reflect new employment eligibility verification requirements set forth in a recent regulation that will also take effect on February 2. The regulation revises the list of documents that employers may accept to establish a worker’s identity and employment authorization, known as List A documents. The following documents have been added to List A on the new edition of Form I-9:

As we anticipated, on January 8, 2009, USCIS updated its H-2B visa count page to announce that the cap has been reached for FY 2009. Thousands of employers in need of seasonal workers will once again need to search for alternatives.

The word “Cap” used in this posting refers to annual numerical limitations set by Congress on certain nonimmigrant visa classifications, e.g., H-1B and H-2B. Caps control the number of workers that can be issued a visa in a given fiscal year to enter the United States pursuant to a particular nonimmigrant classification. Caps also control the number of aliens already in the United States that may be authorized to change status to a cap-subject classification.

The H-2B visa is designated for temporary, non-agricultural workers and is issued for one year with two one-year extensions allowed. Sixty-six thousand visas are reserved for this category each year, with the stipulation that U.S. employers demonstrate that the need for the labor is temporary. It can be seasonal, tied to peak-load demands, or even a one-time occurrence. H-2B visas are a key staffing option for many industries including landscaping, seasonal hospitality, and seasonal construction, and are also critical at peak times in manufacturing, food packaging, and fisheries.

According to the Dairy Herd Migrant or foreign labor is a must for the dairy industry and other parts of agriculture, and a reduction in the workforce could cost consumers considerably. Labor and immigration are tied together, and it includes both legal and illegal immigration, says David Anderson, AgriLife Extension economist in College Station, Texas.

The value of milk production is $28.7 billion and this part of the dairy industry alone provides 147,000 jobs nationwide. If the related industries are added in, it is a $55 billion industry with 363,000 jobs. If you had a foreign labor reduction of only 20 percent, you would lose 33,000 employees, $5.5 billion in sales and $1.5 billion in income, Anderson explains. Total elimination would be a lot higher, he adds. Illegal immigrants make up 50 percent of agriculture’s workers.

About 20 percent of the dairy owners said they see labor shortages and are increasing wages to attract workers. Wages are higher where competing jobs are located. There is a vacuum of available workers, in part caused by the failure to pass immigration reform and the movement of penalties from civil to criminal.

I am in the process of reviewing the proposed changes to the H2B Visa program. Upon initial review, there are good and bad news. Here is a brief summary of the Changes, stay tuned more to come.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has submitted to the Federal Register a Final Rule that will change the requirements affecting H-2B beneficiaries and their employers.

Key areas of changes covered in the Final Rule include:

We previously reported about the much needed changes to the H2A Visa Program announced last week. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced several reforms in the H-2A visa system, which allows farmers to hire foreigners for field work that Americans are unwilling to do.

Click here to download the Press release with the Changes Download file

According to the AZ Starnet, “For every farmworker, there are three to 3.5 jobs created in related industries such as chemicals, trucking, refrigeration, fertilizer, packaging . . . a lot of different operations,” Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, said last year. He said his agricultural trade organization represents 3,000 members who grow roughly half the produce in the United States.

A December 11, 2008 USCIS Update announces that the agency has finalized changes to H-2A regulations. This final rule will facilitate the H-2A process for employers by removing certain limitations.

U.S. employers may file an H-2A petition with USCIS if they have a shortage of available U.S. workers to fill temporary or seasonal agricultural jobs. Once the petition is approved, the employers can hire foreign workers to fill those jobs for a limited period of time. There is no cap limitation on H2A visas unlike the sister program H2B.

Key areas of reform addressed in the final rule include: