Tag: US Senate

Another Government Shutdown Looms: What It Means For Employers With Foreign National Employees

Only two days before the deadline in November 2023, the U.S. Senate passed a temporary budget to fund federal agencies through Jan. 19, 2024, marking the first time since 2012 that Congress entered a holiday season without the threat of a December shutdown. Now, following the start of a new year, lawmakers have less than two weeks to advance a recent spending agreement and reach a more permanent solution.

The November 2023 vote marked the second time Congress extended the budget for fiscal year 2023, which expired in September, to avert a government shutdown.

IMPACT ON IMMIGRATION

For employers, immigration funding and legislation are top of mind whenever a shutdown looms. Each time the government is on the verge of a shutdown, employers must identify cases that are affected and attempt to locate an avenue to mitigate the impact of the potential shutdown. This increases costs and reduces efficiency, among other complex consequences.

During the 2019 government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Justice suspended 60,000 hearings for non-detained migrants, causing significant delays in the immigration system. Rescheduling an appearance on the immigration docket can often take years, leaving migrants and their families to wait in uncertainty in the interim.

On the employment-based side of immigration, a mad dash ensues each time a government shutdown becomes imminent because applications made to the Department of Labor that are critical steps in both nonimmigrant and immigrant visa categories come to a halt. With already lengthy processing times, foreign national beneficiaries and their employers cannot afford to wait 90 days, as we saw in 2019, for government processing to resume.

Employers and their legal teams would be wise to shift their focus during these times to pushing forward the submission of as many Labor Condition Applications (LCAs), permanent labor certification applications (PERM), and prevailing wage determination requests as possible. A missed window of opportunity can result in years-long delays, or worse, the loss of work authorization, for critical foreign national talent in the U.S.

HOW TO PREPARE

With deadline déjà vu, now is the time for employers to prepare. Employers should consider the following three actions:

1) Submit Labor Condition Applications for all foreign nationals with a nonimmigrant visa (NIV) status expiring within the next six months, should the relevant nonimmigrant visa category require an application, such as for H-1B, H-1B1, and E-3 visa classifications

2) Submit Prevailing Wage Requests for all initiated PERM processes

3) File any PERM applications of individuals for whom the requisite recruitment steps and waiting periods have been completed

© 2023 BARNES & THORNBURG LLP
For more on Foreign National Employees, visit the NLR Labor & Employment section.

IOT (Internet of Things) Legislation Makes an Appearance in the U.S. Senate

For those who are not familiar with the acronym, IoT or ‘Internet of things’ refers to the interconnection of network devices and everyday objects for increased control and ease of use.

The US Government has been steadily increasing the amount of IoT devices used in day-to-day business. In response to mounting concerns surrounding this, a bipartisan group in the Senate revealed a piece of legislation that will govern the use of IoT devices in the government context.

As we have blogged previously, the implementation of IoT brings with it an array of potential security issues and vulnerabilities. If hackers are able to access one device, there’s the possibility for them to manipulate others connected on the same network. This could result in national security risks, citizen information breaches or high-scale ransom attacks.

Under the bill, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will give recommendations to the federal government, including minimum security requirements and how the government should approach potential cybersecurity issues. These policies and recommendations would be revisited every five years to keep them fresh and responsive to ever-changing cyber threats.

The potential that such standards would provide more industry wide guidance is to be encouraged, as several years into the growth of IoT there remains huge variability in security. The internet of things is generally less of a focus than most people’s computers, but the impact and ability to propagate is arguably greater.

Ella Richards and Cameron Abbott of K&L Gates contributed to this post.

Copyright 2019 K&L Gates.