I thought I would do a mini update as to what the Swine Flu has meant as far as US Immigration is concerned given that the US has had more reported cases than any other country. Additionally despite much of the blame being shifted to Mexico, the disease outbreak also originated in the US.

Some anti-immigrant groups are blaming the swine flu on illegal immigrants and others are going so far as to demand closing of the border. This is of course ridiculous given the outbreak began here and if anything should be a fence to keep people in the US from escaping to spread this elsewhere.

In short however if you are on or applying for the H1B Visa, E3 Visa, J-1 Visa Work & Travel, J-1 Visa Internship, L1 visa or F-1 Student Visa and their related dependent visas there is no change at all. Your requirements are the same and there is no change in processing as a result of the swine flu (H1NI) outbreak.

USCIS offices in the U.S. are open as are Consulates and Embassies globally as normal, so you should plan to attend any scheduled appointments. There was a temporary closure of non-essential services at Consulates and the Embassy in Mexico but that is also back to normal as of today.

These are the main points of the H-1B and L-1 visa legislation released today by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

• Require all employers who want to hire an H-1B guest-worker to first make a good-faith attempt to recruit a qualified American worker. Employers would be prohibited from using H-1B visa holders to displace qualified American workers.

• Prohibit the blatantly discriminatory practice of “H-1B only” ads and prohibit employers from hiring additional H-1B and L-1 guest-workers if more than 50% of their employees are H-1B and L-1 visa holders.

• Permit DOL to initiate investigations without a complaint and without the Labor Secretary’s personal authorization;

• Authorize DOL to review H-1B applications for fraud;

• Allow DOL to conduct random audits of any company that uses the H-1B program;

• Require DOL to conduct annual audits of companies who employ large numbers of H-1B workers.

However given phrases like this accompanying the legislation you can see how these Senators would prefer no immigration at all;
“Some claim that the H-1B program helps to create American jobs, but it is currently being used by some companies to outsource American jobs to foreign countries.”
“Employers can legally discriminate against qualified Americans by firing them without cause and recruiting only H-1B guest-workers to replace them.”

I don’t see any phrases in the legislation about how the entire US economy and United States itself is built on Immigration and that over past few years over half of the Silicon Valley Startups were by Immigrants. Nor is anything mentioned about iconic brands like Google, Yahoo and eBay being founded by immigrants and both directly and directly being responsible for hundreds of thousands oj jobs in the United States.

In essence this is just now a dangerous legislative attempt to back comments by the US pliticians and media to try and blame the tiny minority (65,000 H-1B visas annually) of foreign workers for all the US economic problems and divert blame from themselves.

All the banks and insurance companies were not only headed up by Americans but had US people all across their boards. Then of course all the US media companies who were complicit in all of this happening are all owned by US citizens. Finally of course, all politicians in the US who must share a lot of the blame are also US citizens.

So the easy scape goat for all of this becomes the foreigners when in reality they have so little to do with the failures of the economy and much more to do with the success (as mentioned above) and ability of the US economy to recover.

Therefore who is really to blame for the US economic failure and corruption?

If you are residents of Iowa or Illinois, I hope these Senators are not high on your list of people to vote for in the next election.

P.S. There is nothing in here in relation to the E-3 visa at this stage which probably has more to do with the fact it is so unknown in society.