US Immigration News

A new report shows that immigration is helping to boost the US housing market. The report prepared by the Mortgage Bankers Association suggests that between 2010 and 2020 immigrants are expected to account for 35.7% of homebuyers and 26.4% of new home rentals.

The report is called Immigrant Contributions to Housing Demand in the United States: A Comparison of Recent Decades and Projections to 2020 for the States and Nation. It says that 'immigrants are an important and growing source of demand (for housing) that has bolstered housing markets in recent decades'.

On March 8th 2013, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released a new version of the I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification form which is used by the USCIS for 'verifying the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired for employment in the United States'. The form is filled in by employee and employer when an employee begins work and each declares that the employee has shown the employer his visa allowing him to work in the US.

The chief executives of some of the most famous companies in the world have written a public letter to President Obama to press him to support legislation that would allow more skilled immigration into the US. They urge the President to 'address the need for more qualified, highly-skilled professionals, domestic and foreign, and to enact immigration reform this year'. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Eric Schmidt of Google and Bradford Smith of Microsoft all signed the letter.

By Alex Owen

The US is famously a country of migrants. In olden days, they would arrive by ship at the port of New York. One of the most famous images of New York in about 1900 is of immigrants from Europe queuing on Ellis Island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. There were no requirements that you should have a job or that you should invest in a US business. All that was required was that you had made it to New York. Once immigrants were processed, they were released to begin their new lives as equal citizens of the United States of America.

US immigration lawyers are warning that the entire year's quota of 65,000 H-1B 'specialty occupation' visas for the 2014 fiscal year may be allocated in a single week at the beginning of April 2013.

US tech firms are supporting the proposed comprehensive immigration reform bill that is being drafted by a group of eight senators. Tech industry associations such as the Technology CEO Council are also supporting the bill. Marshall Fitz of the pro-immigration reform Center for American Progress told US TV station ABC, 'From a tactical perspective, this is their best chance in the short term of getting the reforms they care most about'.