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00:02 Announcer: Welcome to Immigration Fridays, your source of up-to-date immigration information brought to you every Friday, from Miami, Florida by the Immigration Law Offices of David J. Hart, P.A.

00:24 Announcer: Today is March 23, 2007 and this week's topic, The STRIVE Act of 2007. Here is David Hart.

00:32 David Hart: Welcome back everyone to our immigration podcast known as Immigration Fridays. My name is David Hart. Today is March 23, 2007, Friday, and I’m here as usual with Atty. Andrea Olivos-Kah. How are you today Andrea?

Andrea Olivos-Kah: Great. How are you David?

00:52 David Hart: I’m doing fine. We have big news yesterday, didn’t we? Coming from the House of Representative in Washington DC, something called the STRIVE Act of 2007, which is Security Through Regularized Immigration And A Vibrant Economy Act of 2007. That is quite a title, is not it?

Andrea Olivos-Kah: Yeah. The STRIVE Act.

01:12 David Hart: I think STRIVE Act is much better. It is not easy to summarize but why don’t you give us broad strokes what it means or what it appears to me and obviously we are going to be getting much more information and the other thing is, I mean this is going to be part of our discussion but how significant is it. What do you think?

01:39 Andrea Olivos-Kah: The STRIVE Act actually builds on previous proposals that were presented in the Senate that were presented in the House a couple of times. It has seven parts or seven titles; Title 1 to about Title 3 are all related to border enforcement and security enforcement. There are provisions in this act or this bill that aim to appease those conservatives that were opposed to comprehensive immigration reform, kind of requiring certain things before we can proceed to a temporary worker program, legalization, and earned citizenship program. So those are the first three titles of the bill. Title 5 of the STRIVE Act is important for those who are interested especially in employment-based immigrant visas and non immigrant visas. That part of it has not come out as much in the media because it does not deal with the undocumented but it is really important because that part of the STRIVE Act addresses the backlog in immigrant visas for those who are waiting for either family-based applications for residency or employment-based immigrant visas. It would increase the quota right now. We have for all classifications of employment-based visas, we have 140,000, and that quota that is set by Congress would be increased to 290,000 for all classifications, which is great. The quota or the cap for H1-B which we are all scrambling for to file on time on April 2 as we speak would be raised from the current approximate 65,000 without counting Singapore and Chile H1-Bs, to about 115,000 per fiscal year. Now the last time they were raised to 115,000 was when Clinton was in the administration or in the presidency and it was great because we were able to file for workers that needed them, employers enjoy that time because they were able to get the workers that they needed and so we would be looking at the good old days basically.

03:54 David Hart: And there is also a cap busting provision I see here, which that if the cap is reached during the fiscal year, in other words, if we run out based on 115,000, well it doesn’t explain exactly how but it could be an automatic increase to 180,000 for that particular year, so that if we do run out, in other words, and I think that is a great idea.

Andrea Olivos-Kah: It is kind of like judging the market how many do we need. There is another provision in there also that would propose that foreign workers with advanced skills would be completely except from the H1-B cap.

David Hart: Yeah. It says here except several categories of highly skilled worker and then the title says Advanced Skills. So the language is a little…

04:34 Andrea Olivos-Kah: The Advanced Skill, I kind of refer this back to the Skill Bill that we had seen come through the House and in the Senate in the last session of Congress so it is probably going to be for those individuals who are in the sciences, engineering fields, and who have those type of advanced skills. Now, under Title 6, we get the temporary worker program.

David Hart: No, Title 6 is legalization.

05:07 Andrea Olivos-Kah: Well, there is a couple of different things under Title 6, and they are not calling everything legalization. There is 3 actual programs: One program is the H2-C visa program, which is the program for temporary workers that if they meet certain eligibility requirements, they would be able to stay for 3 years and extend for 3 years with the total maximum period of 6 years. Those are the H2-C visa holders. They would have the right to work and the right to travel.

David Hart: Right and that is what they titled the New Worker Program under Title 4.

05:40 Andrea Olivos-Kah: Right. And then there is something called conditional nonimmigrant status or the visa program for qualified undocumented workers. Now these would be available for undocumented workers and their spouses and children for period of 6 years and it would provide for a status that would be called conditional nonimmigrant legal status. It is not considered to be part of the legalization or the earned citizenship. It is a conditional nonimmigrant status for only 6 years. They have to pay a fine of $500 and there is criteria for criminals, security background clearance and things like that. Now there is a separate section for earned citizenship.

06:16 David Hart: In other words, Title 6 Earned Legalization is intended to legalize the status of those individuals who are in the US without proper status but it is a nonimmigrant status, in other words, it is basically a temporary visa for a total of 6 years.

06:35 Andrea Olivos-Kah: And within those 6 years, people can apply for the program that is being called Earned Citizenship and the Earned Citizenship Program is comprised of both permanent residents and the path to legal citizenship, so it is kind of confusing because they are lumping into earned citizenship. But until you get to the Earned Citizenship part of the program, you don’t have permanent residence in the US. Because the other program, the visa program for qualified undocumented workers, is a conditional nonimmigrant status or a conditional residence status. So under the Earned Citizenship Program within those 6 years, if you are already a conditional nonimmigrant, you can apply for permanent residence status.

07:22 David Hart: Right. And that says it is going to require an exit and reentry what they called “legal reentry”.  But that can happen. It says here at 90 days before filing an application for adjustment to lawful permanent residence, so that will probably be towards the end of the 6 years. In other words, these individuals will be in lawful status, will have employment authorization, will be legally in the system and I suppose the first ones once this is implemented will be leaving and reentering as a nonimmigrant prior to filing their adjustments so it will be a condition of filing adjustment  under this program.

08:02 Andrea Olivos-Kah: Right. So just to clarify because I think it is a little bit confusing. One person could hold for example an H2-C visa first, conditional nonimmigrant status, apply for permanent residence status under the program, and then apply for citizenship eventually when they qualify. So there are different programs, they are going to have to explain the process for applying and forms for applying for the H2-C visa separate from the conditional nonimmigrant status

David Hart: If you qualified as an undocumented worker, which that means if I understand it, those people who are in the US without proper status…

08:45 Andrea Olivos-Kah: That had been present before or on June 1, 2006, and can show employment prior to or on June 1, 2006, and until the present time that they apply.

David Hart: In that case, if you have a job offer, do you have to test the labor market?

Andrea Olivos-Kah: No.

09:03 David Hart: It doesn’t seem to say that. In other words what the H2-C does. So it will be like a mini labor cert but we don’t know what it will be but in other words, it is clear that what they are saying is if you are already working, let us say you are part of the 12 million, you are in the US working then you will not have to test the labor market.

09:30 Andrea Olivos-Kah: That is right. But the other differentiation I think is H2-C visas are for unskilled workers or job that cannot be filled by a US worker.

David Hart: Even whether it is skilled or not.

09:42 Andrea Olivos-Kah: It is either unskilled or it is something that cannot be filled and/or something that cannot be filled by a US worker so if you are a skilled worker, you would have to make a showing that you cannot find someone to fill that position. But the conditional nonimmigrant status has none of those requirements. It could be for someone who is an engineer and has been working here for an employer without documentation.

10:07 David Hart: The overall impression and I’m interested to what your impression is and I think we have already started to get some emails, haven’t we, with questions about this because I know you posted on this on www.immigrateusa.com and it is obviously in the news and I think it is going to be analyzed over the next few days but these programs require that the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security certifies to Congress that there is improvements in enforcement, border security and number of other things including this employer verification. Obviously there is going to be much more detail coming out but they are basically saying and this was in other words let us say last year, the Sensenbrenner Bill was enforcement only and there was a backing away from that to the level of, let us do enforcement first and I think this is almost not to those who may now come in to the <unintelligible>by saying, Ok, this is on the books, well not yet, but if it is ultimately approved and signed by the president, in other words, we are not going to have any sort of legalization until, I imagine it would be Chertoff would certify or implement these procedures in STRIVE in terms of enforcement, employer verification, etc., and then once it is certified, they will implement, they will set a date and then implement the program.

11:48 Andrea Olivos-Kah: Right. I think this proposal is a lot more tangible or possible as far as setting a date like you are saying of the date that we are going to win, are we going to reach that certification date. Before it was like secure the borders and how are we going to measure that. In this proposal, if you look at Title 1, Title 2 and Title 3, it talks about specific things that they have to implement. One of those things being like you said David to implement the employer verification system which the administration had already announced that they were aiming to implement it by 2008. Well it looked like the basic pilot program but with a couple of different things and it would be mandatory for our employers. One of the other things that they have to implement is DHS from now on is going to mandate a new biometric system and enhanced biometric data on all travel documents. And so those are things that can be measured whether they haven’t implemented it, I mean, the budget is going to be have to be there for those things but another issue that is being discussed is adding more technology to the exit and entry systems at the land port of entries and the air and seaports of the entry. So that is going to be whether all land and air and seaports have actual digital fingerprint machines which they don’t right now or whether they have eye scans. So those are things that are tangible that they know whether they have it in place or not.

13:21 David Hart: Right and some of it and this maybe subject to negotiation but it says, the secretary must certify, I’m reading from Title 4 New Worker Program, sets conditions that must be met in order for the secretary of DHS to implement the New Worker Program. The secretary must certify to Congress that border surveillance technology improvements are being implemented. In other words, it is a little bit vague and I suspect that there are some who may want to tighten it up to make those benchmarks more, as you said, they are specific and they can be calculated but some could argue that that language for example is still a little vague. We are going to see if these flies.

14:05 Andrea Olivos-Kah: This proposal was made today. It still has to go to the general floor of the House for a vote; you have to remember that, then somehow the Senate will respond and there will be a different proposal that comes out of the Senate and hopefully both the House and the Senate will go to conference hopefully in July, come out with a bill that the president can sign. I’m saying July because you and I both know that in August there is a recess and after they come back from recess, I mean it is going to be all about the 2008 presidential elections.

14:40 David Hart: Right. It is about the presidential elections, the politics involved in this and the fact that since there is no incumbent running and there is no vice president, we obviously know that there is many many candidates on both sides, republicans and democrats. We have seen it in the press, they are raising money. It is obviously going to be an issue.

Andrea Olivos-Kah: I just wanted to mention. Two other things that were part of this act that are really important were the DREAM Act and AgJOBS Bill.

David Hart: It is included.

15:13 Andrea Olivos-Kah: They are both included in entirety. So that is really great. There is some other miscellaneous staff like adding more prosecutors and more immigration judges and things like that.

15:22 David Hart: Right. There is a lot more there and what I think we should do, Andrea tell if you agree, we would like to hear and get the opinion of our listeners obviously so you can send your emails at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and what we will do is I think in the next few weeks, we will see how this develops and obviously the information will be available as it becomes available to us on our website, www.immigrateusa.com but there is a lot in here, the final product. Clearly, the issue is how is this going to be viewed from the Senate. In other words, remember we talked last week about Kennedy negotiating with the judiciary committee and others on a bipartisan basis. This week in Miami, and we posted something on it, Senator McCain and I actually met him and listen to his little talk in Little Havana in Miami. He is for comprehensive immigration reform. He didn’t mention any of these. This was announced Wednesday of this week that it would be published on Thursday, yesterday. We will see what happens but I think it is a very positive step. I think this has been in the works obviously for some time. I think it is well thought out. It is going to take significant resources. Did you notice for the H2-C, the filing fee is $500? That may not be the only fee. And then what was last year $2000, for the legalization is $1500.

Andrea Olivos-Kah: Right. But that does not include filing fees so we will see what happens, because the filing fees are supposed to go out this summer so.

17:18 David Hart: In any event, very interesting. This is kind of I think what we have been waiting for. If you have listened to our previous podcasts in the last month or two, we have always said we are waiting for something right after the New Year. Well, it is towards the end of March but better now than never and it is going to be an interesting few months coming up so stay tuned and we will be back with another podcast next week.

Andrea Olivos-Kah: Bye everybody.

17: 52 Announcer: I would like to provide you with our contact information so that you can send in your questions, stories and situations. We will try to answer your questions and maybe even interview you on a future program.  You can leave a message at 305-577-9977.  From overseas, the code for the U.S. is 01 or toll free in the US and Canada at 1-800-344-4278. Leave a message for Immigration Fridays or email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also find us at www.immigrateusa.com.