What’s NOT in the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act: Changes to EB Visas

While we were waiting to see the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act, folks were worried about what immigration provisions might be in it. Specifically, there was significant concern that the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act might be swept into the appropriations bill.

As well described by Forbes, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act had a noble purpose — ending the long delays facing Indian nationals seeking EB visas as skilled workers who have been delayed by the per-country limits on EB visas. However, as opponents of the bill argued, the results would have been to delay the processing of skilled worker applications from other parts of the world for many years.

In the end, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act did not make it into the appropriations bill.

What did make it in? As I wrote yesterday: money as well as some small changes regarding H2B seafood industry workers and a mention of denying visas to Chinese officials interfering with Tibetan Buddhists. (No such provision about Uighurs.) And the creation of a Smithsonian Museum of the American Latino.

-KitJ