\n<\/p>\n
In a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, higher ed institutions say maintaining a consistent flow of international faculty and staff members is critical.<\/p>\n
Jabin Botsford\/The Washington Post\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
A number of higher education institutions and the associations that represent them are asking to be exempted from the new $100,000 H-1B visa application fee, saying the prohibitive cost could be detrimental to the recruitment and retention of international faculty, researchers and staff members.<\/p>\n
In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security last week, the American Council on Education argued that such individuals \u201ccontribute to groundbreaking research, provide medical services to underserved and vulnerable populations\u00a0\u2026 and enable language study, all of which are vital to U.S. national interests.\u201d Without them, ACE and 31 co-signers said, key jobs in high-demand sectors such as health care, information technology, education and finance will likely go unfilled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The letter came just days after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services launched a new online payment website and provided an updated statement on policies surrounding the fee. UCIS clarified that the fee will apply to any new H-1B petitions filed on or after Sept.\u00a021, and it must be paid before the petition is filed.<\/p>\n
The update also referenced possible \u201cexception[s] from the fee\u201d but said those exceptions would only be granted in an \u201cextraordinarily rare circumstance where the Secretary has determined that a particular alien worker\u2019s presence in the United States as an H-1B worker is in the national interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
ACE said that H-1B visa recipients in higher education certainly meet those standards, citing data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources that shows that over 70\u00a0percent of international employees at colleges and universities hold tenure-track or tenured positions. The top five disciplines they work in are business, engineering, health professions, computer science and physical
sciences.<\/p>\n
\u201cH-1B visa holders working for institutions of higher education are doing work that is crucial to the U.S. economy and national security,\u201d the letter reads. <\/p>\n
Despite the clarification provided by UCIS, ACE still had several remaining questions about the fee. These included whether the $100,000 would be refunded if a petition was denied and whether individuals seeking a \u201cchange of status\u201d from an H-1B to an F-1 or J-1 would still be required to pay the fee. <\/p>\n
At least two lawsuits have been filed against DHS concerning these visa fees. Neither has been issued a ruling so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, higher ed institutions say maintaining a consistent flow of international faculty and staff members is critical. Jabin Botsford\/The Washington Post\/Getty Images A number of higher education institutions and the associations that represent them are asking to be exempted from the new $100,000 H-1B visa application<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2974,1439,9232,495,16349,183,202],"class_list":{"0":"post-31376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-concerns","9":"tag-fee","10":"tag-h1b","11":"tag-higher","12":"tag-institutions","13":"tag-raise","14":"tag-visa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}