Comments
The federal district court in the Northern District of California has approved a settlement under which US Citizenship and Immigration Services will have to consider market research analyst a ‘speciality occupation’, making professionals working in this field eligible for H-1B visas. So far, it was the most sought-after work visa for IT professionals and their employers.
Based on its prior interpretation of the Occupational Outlook Handbook — a Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publication defining hundreds of occupations in the US job market — the USCIS was determining that market research analysts did not qualify as a “specialty occupation”. The settlement will allow companies to request USCIS to reopen and re-adjudicate their denied H-1B petitions.
Leslie K Dellon, senior attorney (business immigration) at the American Immigration Council said, “This settlement is an important victory that will benefit hundreds of American businesses and the market research analysts they sought to employ.”
The class-action lawsuit in this regard was filed by the American Immigration Council, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the law firms Van Der Hout LLP, Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (formerly Joseph & Hall PC), and Kuck Baxter Immigration LLC.
Jeff Joseph, partner at Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP, said, “This settlement strikes the right balance between what the regulations actually say and how employers evaluate a candidate’s professional qualifications in the real world. It is our sincere hope that USCIS will now interpret other specialty occupations from a perspective that is in line with what actually happens in the free market.”
IT professionals
While inclusion of new categories of professions will impact the quota for technology professionals to some extent, the latter would still continue to find its way through the lottery going by sheer volume of applications, legal experts said. Nearly 70 per cent of the total H-1B visas allocation every year globally go to Indian IT professionals.
Poorvi Chothani, founder and managing partner of global immigration law firm LawQuest, told BusinessLine , “There would be a slight reduction in the number of H-1B visas that will be allocated to technology professionals in the lottery, but the difference would be marginal. The IT sector wouldn’t be impacted significantly as, generally speaking, the number of applications from India for market research analyst roles are far lower in proportion to the applications for IT jobs. Hence, in the lottery system, the number of selections for market analysts will also be proportionally less.”
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.