Congress is actively considering Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR).  It is expected that they will continue to hold formal hearings and debates throughout most of May.    Many of the proposed legislative measures contain very favorable improvements to the business immigration community, such as progressive H-1 quotas, increased healthcare visa numbers, and enhancements to the Labor Certification system.  There is a real chance that CIR could be signed into law this summer.  None of us want to go through a one-day H-1 season ever again!

CIR will only happen with action.  HLG specifically requests that you take a few minutes and do two things:

1.  Send a letter to your Congressional Representatives and Senators. 

A model letter that client companies can personalize is located at:

http://capwiz.com/aila2/issues/alert/?alertid=9589591. 

HLG estimates that this should take 10-12 minutes of your time.  So far, over 7,700 letters and emails have been sent in just the last two weeks.  Please keep the momentum going!

2.  Let HLG know if your company has been negatively impacted by this year’s quick H-1 cap. 

HLG, along with many other like-minded law firms, is preparing a massive list of all companies impacted by the quick H-1 cap and examples of the impact.  We expect to serve this letter on Congress in early May.  This should take you 3-5 minutes of time.

Please send Chris Musillo an email with this information:

Name of Company:

City, State of Company:

Brief description of the impact:

Examples of impact:

A.  ABC manufacturing company in Pennsylvania was unable to hire an H-1B researcher to start October 2007 because of the H-1B cap. As a result, the company could not launch a new product in our XYZ division; or

B. DEF Hospital in New York City was unable to hire a Physical Therapist this summer.  We will therefore be unable to assist approximately New York City senior citizens 20 persons per week; or

C.  GHI Technology Company, a Chicago IT Consultancy, was unable to hire 10 Programmer/Analysts because of the H-1 cap.  We were therefore unable to bid for a contract with a Fortune 500 company.  This cost our company approximately $1 Million in Gross Revenue and may lead to our firm laying off 15 workers, 9 of which are US workers.

Here is the sign-on letter to which we will add your company’s name.