“Another cultural change at the agency was changing USCIS’ mission statement by removing “welcoming immigrants” language. Ending BAHA will hopefully be the beginning of restoring that,” said Greg Siskind, founding partner at immigration law firm Siskind Susser, PC. BAHA essentially was a mandate to change the culture of welcoming immigrants to treating them as a threat to the US. “I think the revocation of that memo will have an impact, though it’s not easy to quantify. The positive tech employment stood out in a month where the US economy lost 140,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation report, ComTIA said.Īnalysts said it was too early to quantify the impact of Biden's latest move. Tech unemployment stood at 3% at the beginning of 2020 and ranged from a low of 2.4% to a high of 4.6% during the year, US IT industry non-profit ComTIA has said.Īround 22,000 IT workers were added in December, with 391,000 positions overall in 2020. The tech occupation unemployment rate was 3% in December, compared to 6.7% for the overall economy. The US IT industry has a shortage of talented workforce even as the US economy faces massive unemployment.
Visa denial rates had already dropped to about 1.5% in the final quarter of the previous fiscal year that ended September 30, following a number of US court verdicts that went against the government. Since the BAHA policy came from the President, officers felt incentivized to find ways to deny these petitions even when they were otherwise meritorious,” said immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta. “The BAHA policy gave justification to immigration officers to deny H-1B and L-1A petitions in the name of protecting American workers. Last week, Biden signed an executive order to strengthen manufacturing in America, and BAHA - which was drawn up to create higher wages and employment rates for US workers by restricting immigrant workers - was revoked as part of that order.