{"id":74,"date":"2009-02-25T22:30:04","date_gmt":"2009-02-26T04:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/?p=74"},"modified":"2009-02-25T22:31:30","modified_gmt":"2009-02-26T04:31:30","slug":"obamas-stimulus-plan-and-its-effect-on-h-1b-visa-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/?p=74","title":{"rendered":"Obama&#8217;s Stimulus Plan and Its Effect on H-1B Visa Applications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- \t \t --><\/p>\n<p>On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rules.house.gov\/111\/LegText\/hr1_legtext_cr.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009<\/a> containing the Sanders H-1B amendment.\u00a0 The Sander H-1B amendment prohibits the sponsoring of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.messersmithlaw.com\/work-visa\/h1b-visa.html\" target=\"_blank\">H-1B visas<\/a> by organizations that received funding of through the <a href=\"http:\/\/frwebgate.access.gpo.gov\/cgi-bin\/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_public_laws&amp;docid=f:publ185.110\" target=\"_blank\">Emergency Economic Stimulus Act of 2008<\/a> (TARP money) unless the organization complies with the requirements of H-1B dependent employers for the next two years.<\/p>\n<p>H-1B dependent employers are defined as employers with:<\/p>\n<p>1.\u00a0 25 or fewer full time equivalent employees in the US and employ more than seven H-1B visa holders; or<\/p>\n<p>2.\u00a0 26-50 full time equivalent employees in the US and employ more than 12 H-1B visa holders; or<\/p>\n<p>3.\u00a0 have more than 50 full time equivalent employees in the US and employ at least 15% of their workforce with H-1B visa holders.<\/p>\n<p>H-1B dependent employers must make certain attestations with regard to US worker displacement, recruitment and hiring. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aila.org\/\" target=\"_self\">American Immigration Lawyers Assication (AILA)<\/a> recently posted a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aila.org\/content\/default.aspx?docid=28020\">press release<\/a> stating that these attestation requirements &#8220;saddles TARP fund recipients with strict regulations for hiring foreign workers under the H-1B program that are so cumbersome as to amount to an out-and-out prohibition.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Notwithstanding AILA&#8217;s position, this is actually good news for many prospecitve H-1B visa applicants who intend to file this April 2009 for FY2010.\u00a0 Last April, USCIS was overwhelmed with H-1B applications and the 65,000 H-1B Visa Cap was met in the very first week and tens of thousands of applications were rejected through a lottery system.\u00a0 If the Sanders amendment precents the large financial firms from applying as AILA as predicted, there will be many more available H-1B visas for applicants from smaller US companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 containing the Sanders H-1B amendment.\u00a0 The Sander H-1B amendment prohibits the sponsoring of H-1B visas by organizations that received funding of through the Emergency Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 (TARP money) unless the organization complies with the requirements of H-1B &#8230; <a title=\"Obama&#8217;s Stimulus Plan and Its Effect on H-1B Visa Applications\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/?p=74\" aria-label=\"Read more about Obama&#8217;s Stimulus Plan and Its Effect on H-1B Visa Applications\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,24],"tags":[173,176],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-h-1b-visa","category-h-1b-visa-cap","tag-h-1b-visa","tag-h-1b-visa-cap"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.messersmithlaw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}