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DHS Proposes Certain Regulatory Immigration Reforms

On January 31, 2012, DHS announced a series of regulatory immigration reforms with a view toward attracting and retaining highly skilled immigrants. Although President Obama supports more comprehensive US immigration reform, including creation of a Startup Visa category, strengthening the H-1B visa program, and providing a Green Card to certain graduates of programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), such reform is currently a long-term goal. However, regulatory reforms are measures that agencies such as DHS can take on their own initiative. For this reason, these are shorter-term goals that may be implemented as soon as the rulemaking process for each is complete. The proposed DHS regulatory reforms are listed below. (more…)