Posted on 06/12/2008 11:52:29 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
Comprehensive immigration reform may have eluded the 110th Congress, but House Democrats are still hoping to help two groups of workers — fashion models and computer geeks — who are usually linked only in implausible online fantasies.
Under current immigration policy, models coming to the United States for a photo shoot or an event — regardless of how short the stay — compete with high-tech workers for precious H-1B visas. But under a bill that cleared the Judiciary Committee last week, the models would be moved into a separate immigration category, freeing up more H-1B slots for the much-needed nerds.
The models and the high-tech workers were hastily lumped together in a 1991 immigration package. Back then, it didn’t much matter: The number of available H-1B visas was greater than the number of qualified applicants seeking them.
But those days are gone. In recent years, there have been as many as 165,000 applicants annually for the category’s 85,000 possible spots. As the competition for the visas has stiffened, the models have been squeezed out.
According to the committee report accompanying the bill, the government issued between 614 and 790 visas to models in each year between 2000 and 2005. But the number began falling after that, and it was all the way down to 349 in fiscal year 2007.
A shortage of models? Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who introduced a bill that would create 1,000 new visa slots for them, said it’s a problem in Manhattan but also in his Brooklyn district, which feels the impact in terms of the loss of “ancillary benefits” such as jobs in the industry or increased business.
Weiner’s bill moves models into a new P-4 visa category, one associated with entertainers and athletes.
The bill’s language requires that the visiting model be “of distinguished merit and ability” and that the event or photo shoot have a “distinguished reputation.”
Failing that, a model may be sponsored by “an organization or establishment that has a distinguished reputation for, or a record of, utilizing prominent modeling talent.”
The committee report makes the case for the new visa category. The current visa structure, it says, “hurts American commercial interests” and “undermines our nation’s leadership role in the international fashion, publishing and advertising industries.”
More on this from yesterday.....http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2029447/posts
This weenie has done enough damage already. He wants to do more.
What a doofus.
I absolutely and completely fail to see the harm in bring more models to this country.
“freeing up more H-1B slots for the much-needed nerds.”
Not true!! Our American engineers struggle for jobs while cheap engineers from India are hired and used.
I agree. And I volunteer to be the one to screen portfolios to decide which ones get the visa and which don't, absolutely free of charge.
I thought this was going to be an article about William Jefferson Clinton.
We don’t NEED more computer geeks working from abroad in this country.
We need the industry to pay a fair wage for those who’ve invested in a college education.
Billionaire Gates has enough billions.
He doesn’t need to be taxed, but he needs to stop pocketing the cost savings himself.
The Rats only care about Fair Trade coffee and how the employees are treated. Not so much for white collar office workers.
Um, I believe you told ME. I’m just letting you know that I’m sticking up for your interests, in my own small way.
Uh, so I did. You were listening? Who knew???
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