Thursday, February 2, 2012

SENATE SET TO MOVE ON IRISH VISA BILL


Irish-American lobbyists have been pushing for an E-3 visa bill for Irish nationals. The bill (S.1983) took a big step forward this week when Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) "hotlined" the bill, which a procedure to expedite the passage of the bill.

The Irish E-3 bill would be similar to the Australian E-3 visa bill, which allows most bachelor-degree prepared workers to obtain an H-1B-like visa without many of the administrative burden incumbent in the H-1B. If the bill passes Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Speech Language Pathologists, and other allied health workers with bachelors degrees who are Irish citizens would have another avenue to come to the US. Irish Permanent Residents would be ineligible for the E-3.

The bill also now includes The Fairness For High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which seeks to eliminate the individual per-country numerical quotas that exist in the allocation of employment-based green cards. The per-country restrictions would be eliminated over three years.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Chris with regard the per country limit is there anywhere you can see how many people are waiting in individual countries it would be nice to see?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Laynu,

    Here is the link: http://www.ilw.com/immigrationdaily/news/2012,0209-cutoffdates.pdf

    ReplyDelete

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