Attorney Sheela Murthy EDITORIAL COMMENTS for Feb 1999
Posted Feb 25, 1999

We have finally progressed in the political front beyond the impeachment hearings and hopefully can move on with the county's business now. The Republican Congress may have been burnt to some extent, at the very least, by pursuing impeachment when polls indicated that approximately 70% of the country wanted a closure of the witch hunt against President Clinton, however much he may have acted reprehensibly. In retrospect, the impeachment may have been a double edged sword from an immigration law perspective. While the bad news is that our time and resources were squandered on this trial, the silver lining is that the Republican majority Congress did not have any time to pass any anti-immigration laws!

I traveled to Los Angeles earlier in February 1999 to attend the American Bar Associations meeting of the Coordinating Committee on Immigration Law (ABA meeting). It is important to understand that even though we believe that immigration laws are unfair to employment based applicants with the slow processing time taken by the INS with respect to many petitions, including employment based cases, we are fortunate that in fact, employment based immigration is generally given preference by the INS (believe it or not). At the ABA meeting, there were detailed presentations of immigrant agricultural workers and their sorry plight in terms of jobs, wages, hours worked and lack of housing that should make us realize how lucky we are and often tend to forget it.

It is that time of the year again to celebrate the achievements of immigrants and their contributions to this great nation. The celebrations are on Friday, March 19, 1999 in Washington D.C. Previous award recipients include U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright; Ruth Westheimer, sexologist; Ted Koppel T.V. Host of NBC Nightline program; and other luminaries. The Law Office of Sheela Murthy will be a sponsor of this program since the funds benefit AILF. The American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) is the advocacy and media arm of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Do consider contributions to this worth while cause. Those interested can review the details in the article in this Bulletin or send us an email at law@murthy.com.

In this February 1999 edition of the Immigration Law Bulletin of the Law Office of Sheela Murthy, we have continued the theme of focusing on employment based immigration in accordance with the request of the overwhelming number of our readers and clients.

We have provided a brief outline of the regulations proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor for the H1B regulations under the 1998 law. We have also discussed INS policies and procedures and an interesting article which discusses the statistics of immigration to the United States, touching upon the fact that the top 5 countries responsible for H1B non-immigrants in the U.S. are currently India, the United Kingdom, Japan, Philippines and Germany.

I have been often asked questions by both employers and employees on the H1B cap issue and we have provided you the latest statistics as provided by the INS. As of January 31, 1999, we have apparently utilized approximately 70,000 H1Bs against the increased quota of 115,000 for this fiscal year. Although there are no guarantees, there is a chance that the H1B numbers will be exhausted by the summer of 1999. The other theme of providing an overview on an aspect of immigrant life is a simple summary of banking in the U.S.

As always, we hope that you find the Immigration Law Bulletin of the Law Office of Sheela Murthy helpful and informative. May it provide you some guidance on the complex and ever changing environment of immigration laws. Ultimately, we hope that our Bulletin helps you to plan your strategy, take remedial action, file a Petition earlier than you intended or provide some other relief you would not have thought of, but for this Bulletin, so that you can have a good nights rest -- which from my personal experience can be invaluable!