L. Francis Cissna, director of US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), has announced that the agency is making plans to simplify the H-1B visa lottery program beginning in 2019 for the 2020 fiscal year. These changes would potentially include an employer’s ability to preregister electronically for the H-1B lottery and, if selected in the lottery, file the H-1B petition with USCIS, instead of submitting full petitions before the lottery is completed. Cissna tells Bloomberg Law that he hopes that the agency will implement changes in time for when H-1B cases can be filed in April 2019, although the agency may not have sufficient time to do so. "[Y]ou don’t have to file and go through the hassle and effort and cost of preparing a full-blast petition,” Cissa says, touting the benefit of preregistration. “I think that’s a lot easier than the current situation.”
Read moreTogether We Stand
Candy Nation
Candy Nation by French sculptor Laurence Jenkell is a series of oversized candies displaying flags of different countries. First exhibited for the G20 Summit in Cannes, France in 2011, Candy Nation is now installed on the Garment District malls on Broadway between 36th and 39th Street as part of Garment District Alliance’s 15th Annual Arts Festival that runs from October 18th to 20th. The nine-foot tall sculptures each weigh 1,450 pounds and are wrapped in polyester resin. Flag featured in the series are from such countries as the US, European Union (plus member countries Germany, France, and Italy), Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and many others. Barbara A. Blair, president of the Garment District Alliance, says: “Through her remarkable exhibit, Laurence Jenkell leverages both simple and universal imagery to remind New Yorkers of our global character, right at a moment when such reminders are so timely and valuable.”
Brookings Institution: “A dozen facts about immigration"
The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., has released a report about immigration in the US. The document, an update of a previously published report, aims to provide economic facts about the role of immigration in the US economy and discusses patterns of recent immigration (including levels, legal status, country of origin, and US state of residence), characteristics of immigrants (including education, occupations, and employment), and the effects of immigration on the economy (economic output, wages, innovation, fiscal resources, and crime).
Read moreA Decent Life
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
American People Series #18: The Flag is Bleeding by Faith Ringgold
Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, features the work of over sixty black artists from 1963 to 1983, “one of the most politically, socially, and aesthetically revolutionary periods in American history.” Over 150 artworks in the exhibition address the unjust social conditions facing black Americans. These include Faith Ringgold’s painting of a “bleeding” flag (above). Ringgold, who was inspired by Amiri Baraka, one of the key leaders of the Black Arts Movement, developed a style that she called “super realism” to accurately depict the “oppression faced by Black people as viscerally as possible.” The exhibition is at the Brooklyn Museum through February 3, 2019.
The Public Charge Rule: a Q&A
As part of every Green Card (immigrant visa) petition foreign nationals must demonstrate they will be able to support themselves and not become “public charges.” Additionally, every time foreign nationals seek admission to the US, they must demonstrate that will not become “public charges.” A “public charge” is someone the United States believes is primarily dependent on the federal government to subsist. On September 22, 2018, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an advance copy of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) related to the public charge ground of inadmissibility.
Read moreBloomberg Businessweek: “Trump Booted Foreign Startup Founders. Other Countries Embraced Them”
As the Trump administration sought to end the International Entrepreneur Rule created by the Obama administration for immigrant entrepreneurs and has made obtaining H-1B visas more difficult, other countries have sought to attract tech talent and entrepreneurs. Although immigrants and children of immigrants have played critical roles in many of Silicon Valley’s top companies—including Google, Tesla, eBay, Stripe, Apple, Oracle, and Amazon—immigrants are now being drawn to visa programs with a range of perks in such countries as the UK, China, Japan, Israel, Germany, Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. “The fight over tech talent is not something that is coming in the future. It’s happening right now,” Kate Mitchell, founder of Scale Venture Partners in Foster City, California, tells Bloomberg. “And we are losing.”
Read moreIndigenous Communities
Trevi Fountain
The Trevi Fountain (Fontana di Trevi) is one of the most iconic sights in Rome. This fountain, a late Baroque masterpiece, was designed by Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762. The fountain stands about eighty-five feet high and is approximately 160 feet wide. At the center is Pietro Bracci’s statue of Oceanus standing on a chariot pulled by sea horses and accompanied by tritons, similar to how I get around Rome (okay, I wish). While apparently splashing around in the fountain like Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita is frowned upon, visitors are allowed to toss coins in, since according to legend, those who toss coins into its waters will return to Rome. But don’t worry, at the end of each day the coins are collected and donated to charity.