September 21, 2015
By Ian Smith
Administration lawyers ‘reinterpret’ the law to greatly increase visas for technology firms.
Last week Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley hit back against Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the agency pushed through, during a congressional recess, a major immigration item that has long been on the technology lobby’s wish list. According to a new “policy memorandum,” Obama’s immigration authorities will now be redefining the term “specialized knowledge” as it applies to the L-1B visa, a program previously aimed at bringing over highly sought-after “intracompany transferees” from American firms’ affiliated companies abroad. No doubt burned by Congress’s “stubborn” refusal to raise the cap on annual cap on H-1B visas (which are “skilled” temporary non-immigrant worker visas) the Obama administration, at the behest of Big Tech lobbyists, has told its agency lawyers to think up a clever alternative. In a strongly worded letter to Obama’s immigration authorities, Grassley, a 35-year Senate veteran, closely outlines the legal and practical faults of the new policy and demands answers from the agency regarding its purported authority for the move. …
Read the full story by IRLI’s Ian Smith.
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