Within the immigration system, S. 744 exempts anyone who has earned a Masters or PhD from an accredited American university in a STEM field from the EB visa cap. Immigrants would still need to have a job offer and be sponsored by their employer, but would not need to go through the labor certification process, which will allow their EB applications to be approved more quickly. This section of the bill will allow most international STEM graduate students to move directly from their student visa to a green card, without having to first get an H‐1B. The number of EB visas available to undergraduates will increase as graduate students are taken out of the line, and the EB country caps are eliminated, resulting in much shorter waits for all international students. All EB categories should be current within five years.
Additionally, a new $500 fee has been attached to companies using the labor certification process. This would be paid by any company trying to sponsor a non‐STEM worker for a green card (STEM workers are exempt from labor certification). Funds raised by this fee would be channeled into programs to improve American STEM education.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the H‐1b visa cap is increased immediately from 65,000 to 110,000 annually, with an additional 25,000 H‐1Bs for graduate students (up from 20,000). The bill contains an escalator which will increase the base cap to 185,000 over time. This is 125,000 more H‐1bs than were available in 2012. When you add in the existing exemption for non‐profit research institutions (universities and hospitals, mostly) and new exemptions for graduate students and spouses of H‐1B workers, the grand total of H‐1bs available each year will be approximately 300,000, more than double the 2012 total (134,780).
