disturbing notice of the federal government's sudden six-month-long
suspension of review and approval of the work visas necessary for
international scholars and students who have been hired or accepted for
study on all campuses of the University of Minnesota. These are
highly-educated and highly-qualified internationals who have been closely
vetted by our academic departments and the U's administration before offers
have been made to them. They will not be able to come now.
As the Office of International Scholar and Student Services at the Humphrey
School notes, this suspension of dealing with H1-B visas is unprecedented
and will negatively affect the U of Minnesota's Minneapolis-based
functioning.
I speak here as a former chair of a Minneapolis campus department that had
frequent visiting scholars hired for a semester or an academic year to
enrich our programs. This kind of sudden, unilateral and un-consulted move
by the Trump administration affects tons of people in our community. We
just don't hear of it. You remember hearing about this in the local
newspapers?
Here's a short summary of what's happened, from "U of MN Brief":
"On March 3, 2017, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS)
unexpectedly announced they are suspending “Premium Processing” for all
H-1B petitions for up to 6 months
<http://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/uscis-will-temporarily-suspend-premium-processing-all-h-1b-petitions>
(effective April 3). Premium Processing is the expedited processing service
under which USCIS assures adjudication of an H-1B petition within 15
calendar days of submission for an extra $1,225 fee (as opposed to the
standard processing that currently takes 7-8 months).
"This suspension will impact all job offers requiring an H-1B for at least
the next 6 months, including all requests currently pending and those
submitted to ISSS in the next 6 months. If your application request was
submitted to ISSS on March 7 or later, it is estimated that the earliest
possible job start date for new non-transfer cases may be November 2017 or
later.
"ISSS will triage and examine all application requests (cases) that
had *already
been initiated* by departments prior to March 7, 2017. We will also examine
all cases for alternative work visa options, such as F-1 OPT, J-1 Research
Scholar or Visiting Professor, TN, etc.
"Because we normally take a minimum of 4 weeks to process a case
<https://isss.umn.edu/H1BEmployment/ProcessTime.html> and we already have
more H-1B application requests than we can submit to USCIS before April 3,
ISSS must prioritize our response. We will sort the cases we had already
received by the type of case and whether they need to be submitted before
April 3, or can be submitted after that date."
Connie Sullivan, Como