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On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009<\/a> containing the Sanders H-1B amendment.\u00a0 The Sander H-1B amendment prohibits the sponsoring of H-1B visas<\/a> by organizations that received funding of through the 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 H-1B dependent employers are defined as employers with:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 25 or fewer full time equivalent employees in the US and employ more than seven H-1B visa holders; or<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 26-50 full time equivalent employees in the US and employ more than 12 H-1B visa holders; or<\/p>\n 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 H-1B dependent employers must make certain attestations with regard to US worker displacement, recruitment and hiring. The American Immigration Lawyers Assication (AILA)<\/a> recently posted a press release<\/a> stating that these attestation requirements “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.”<\/p>\n Notwithstanding AILA’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":" 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 … 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":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t