Wall Street Journal: AI Workers Deserve Special Visa Consideration, Group Says

AI Workers Deserve Special Visa Consideration, Group Says Partnership on AI calls for countries competing in global AI race to rethink visa policies. A global group focused on artificial intelligence is calling on governments to revamp their visa policies to make it easier for AI professionals to freely move around the world….

…While the policy recommendations don’t target the U.S., they come as Washington has been placing additional scrutiny on employee visa applications, including those for highly skilled tech workers seeking temporary H1-B visas. As such, said Cornell Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, the country is unlikely to embrace the group’s suggestions.  “I wish them well, but a lot of these things I do not think are going to be implemented in the United States,” he said…

Times of India: Deloitte, Apple, Cognizant biggest filers of LCAs in FY2019

Deloitte, Apple, Cognizant biggest filers of LCAs in FY2019 Deloitte, Apple and Cognizant filed the most labour condition applications (LCAs) with the U.S. Department of Labor for FY2019, showed data from the Office of Foreign Labor Certification. LCA is a precursor to filing actual H-1B petitions with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)….

… “H-1B filing numbers by the Indian IT consulting firms are noticeably down over the past few years,” said Scott J FitzGerald, managing partner at immigration firm Fragomen Worldwide.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, said the decline is not limited to Indian companies. “Overall, the number of LCAs filed by the top 10 employers in the third quarter of 2019 was 218,906, down from 374,951 in the same quarter of 2018. The percentage decline is slightly higher for Indian companies, but the more significant finding is the overall decline,” he said. …

Law360 (subscription required): Future Of Asylum Bar Remains Uncertain, Despite Court Block

Future Of Asylum Bar Remains Uncertain, Despite Court Block A California judge’s reinstatement of a nationwide ban on the Trump administration’s policy denying asylum to those who pass through a third country before reaching the southwest border provides uniformity after a narrower ban, but a decision by the Supreme Court may be the only thing that can end the confusion that has plagued immigration attorneys for weeks….

… Another restricted injunction could also lead to asylum seekers becoming “savvy” and deliberately entering the U.S. within the Ninth Circuit only, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell Law School.

“Here with the stakes so high, I think that there are particularly compelling reasons to decide this issue nationwide and not circuit by circuit,” he said….