A new H-1B requirement may tarnish high-tech employers’ reputations; Democrats introduce a bill to protect H-1B visa-holders’ spouses’ rights to work. Proposed changes to job advertising requirements before H-2A and  H-2B visas can be used.

H-1B form tarnishes reputations? On Nov. 19, the US Department of Labor began requiring employers to use a H-1B labor condition application form designed largely to inflict reputational harm on high tech employers, Stuart Anderson writes in a Forbes article. The use of government forms to compel information from companies to encourage negative media attention or other types of retaliation for contracting out services should concern the business community and the public at large.

H-4 protection bill. Two California congresswomen, Anna G. Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren, introduced a bill that would prohibit the Trump Administration from revoking an Obama-era rule that extends work authorization to the spouses of H-1B visa holders.

Advertising requirements. The Trump Administration has proposed new rules on how companies must advertise jobs locally before seeking workers through foreign visas, SIA’s Staffing Industry Daily News reports. Employers seeking temporary nonagricultural workers through the H-2B visa program would be required to post advertisements for the jobs online for at least 14 days under a rule proposed by the US Department of Labor and the US Department of Homeland Security. This would replace a current rule that requires employers to advertise such positions in two newspaper print ads.

The Department of Labor simultaneously proposed a similar rule for temporary agricultural workers obtained through the H-2A visa program

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