Law360 Runs Pagano, Higgins, Hutson Article on Business Angles of Biden Immigration Bill

“Inside The Immigration Reform Bill's Business Provisions,” an article by public law and policy partner Ed Pagano, senior policy advisor Casey Higgins and international trade counsel Maka Hutson, has been published by Law360.

The article discusses the potential impact of provisions related to business immigration that are contained in the U.S. Citizenship Act, an immigration reform bill supported by President Biden.

The authors note that “business immigration rules have not been reformed by Congress in more than 30 years,” which has been accompanied by long backlogs in processing employment-based immigrant visas, particularly for Indian and Chinese nationals.

The business aspects of the bill that they spotlight, then, include reforms of employment-based green cards, such as eliminating the per-country caps for employment-based immigrants and recapturing unused employment-based immigrant visas from 1992 to 2020 in order to eliminate backlogged applications.

The authors, however, also note two provisions that may be of concern to the business community, one involving the aforementioned backlog, as eliminating the backlogs could also take up all available immigrant visas, “making employment-based green card unavailable for any new applicants, no matter what country they come from.” The other involves the bill’s authorization of the Secretary for Homeland Security to reduce statutory green card allocations in cases of high levels of unemployment, said levels undefined in the bill.

Additionally, the article discusses reforms of the H-1B visa program and of the F-1 student visa, among other visa categories, as well as the likelihood of success of the extant bill’s comprehensive approach versus that of piecemeal legislation.

The authors close by noting that, “Whatever the path to reform, business immigration rules need to be addressed by Congress as many are outdated and no longer meet the needs of the business community or the country as a whole. The question is, will these provisions be considered last, and if so, will there be enough bipartisan support to enact any of them into law?”

To read the full article, click here.