Its not only that. He is going to do a big EO in 4 weeks(per news on Jul 11) which will bring merit system and i suspect that it will affect H1 and 140 waiters.
I am just surprised how is this section not talked about much as it impacts the i140 holders. Is this just a suggestion to the DHS/DOL or this will be implemented soon? Also even if they implement merit based, there is no guarantee they will remove the country caps, isnt it?
Problem is that he could not do away with daca(which was created by EO). So now he is doing whatever he wants with immigration changes through EO. All he cares about is the reelection hence he can do it now and let all other deal the rest with court but by that time he already earned votes. So he doesnt care if there is a common solution for all people but its just for election stunt but certainly it will affect the people that are targeted.
I think that there will be redoing the labor which will make companies discourage keeping H1 employed. I dont know if it will be in new EO or they will do it part of earlier EO but will see.
All that is correct for someone who wants to do things the right way and not for erratic admin like his. They are following don't ask for permission, just ask for forgiveness strategy. He did visa ban with a stroke of pen.. why wouldn't he do this 'merit based immigration' in the same way. Courts might eventually stop it for changing laws, but to file a law suit finding legal mistakes in EO is going to take several months by which his election targets would be easily met.
If EO is illegal then drump would have won the case but that made things so complicated. There is no fine line between what can be done via EO and what cannot be done via EO. So now he is taking everything in his own hands - this the case with interpretation of law in every country. I dont understand why our countries all have many rules that its left for interpretation.
Correct. By the time people win things in court then its already too late, students get denied, just like how 30% h1 got denied at uscis in the last few years.
Could it also be possible that folks started to add dependents (spouse, foreign born kids) while waiting in line, upgrading priority dates (EB3 -> EB2, EB2 -> EB1)?
when there is 7% quota out of just 140k and when 70% are Indians in H1 then what do we expect. Adding dependents or upgrade/downgrade/duplicate filing of gc by spouses is not a problem as its already a problem of systemic backlog/bottleneck.
Well, dependents does reduce the number of available GCs and that can explain why priority dates would move slower and agree 7% country cap doesn't help either. But what is the source for deliberate action by USCIS to move dates slower for Indians?
if this was the case h4 EADs would have been scrapped with EO, all the rumored LCA changes would have been included in June EO. June EO has a precedence of muslim ban that was challenged in the courts and upheld. Using that precedence (221f that gives executive rights to restrict entry of foreign nationals) Trump is issuing these EOs to restrict entry. Executive doesnt have any power to do unilateral changes to things done via rule making in the past (like h4 EAD) and LCA changes. These require rule making or action from congress. Rule making process takes few months. It can be accomplished but there is less and less time for this administration specially if Trump is defeated.
70% of 140k is occupied by indians which means that every year 10 years worth of labor for gc gets approved. So every year Indians are lagging for 10 years. So now your point for the problem is dependents(partially or fully) and not restricting labor &140 approval to 7% per year(when uscis can only approve 7% of gc per country). I agree that it adds more wait but its not the major problem. Lets fix the major problem which fixes everything.
This deliberate action stuff on part of USCIS is pure speculation. Porting from EB3 to EB2, more demand for EB1s and more overall demand for EB visas worldwide has led to this backlog getting worse.
