We can expect that all H1B employers will have to prove the unavailability of qualified Americans. We can expect that all H-1B employers will have to prove they did not displace US workers. We can expect random audits without the need for specific complaints by DOL that simply does not believe what our labor condition applications say. We can expect that H-1Bs will become mini- labor certifications, that L employers will have to prove they pay a prevailing wage. For the first time since its creation in 1970, the L no longer flies under the radar. Even the blanket L is not safe. It is not out of the question for Congress to require that employers submit a separate application for each L-1 visa. Whether true or not, the linkage of the L and H with outsourcing to India is very much on Congress' radar screen. Any employer who sends white collar jobs out of the United States should not expect an easy time in using the H or L visa when they seek to bring foreign workers in. It does not matter that this is an anecdotal outrage limited to an unscrupulous few; Congress now believes it to be so and, given our credibility on the Hill and with the American public, will not hesitate to frame immigration policy on the basis of this belief.
When I was in high school, the son of a local attorney committed a felony—and when bragging his friends about getting away with it, he said the "The key to getting off, is to deny, deny, deny".
I really don't think that the changes Mr. Edelman is suggesting would do much more than just provide a bit of modest relief—if that. These measures don't go to the root of the issue of maintaining the value of US citizenship rights—and keeping those impacted by changes in immigration law from being horribly impacted.
Buckminster Fuller once suggested if would be far cheaper for society to pay attorneys to do nothing than to have them do what they often do. One study claimed the negative economic impact per attorney was $1 Million/year. Low Immigration societies like Japan seem to get by with a lot fewer attorneys than the US has.
Immigration attorneys are an occupation based on the practice of mining the value of citizenship to earn a living. We clearly need much better oversight of the bar—and of this specialty in particular.
The current immigration system is fundamentally bad-and creates enormous conflicts of interest-and brings out the worse in people.
If you think things are bad now-just wait until many of the H-1b/L-1 workers now here start to realize they don't have a real future in the US and start to cash in their chips.
