Fight over foreign student visa extension continues

Do American workers who feel aggrieved by the government's handling of the foreign student visa law have a right to challenge the Bush administration's handling of that policy in federal court? That is the question pending in a federal lawsuit in which the Programmers Guild, the Immigration Reform Law Institute and others have been trying to stop the Department of Homeland Security's unilateral extension of visas from one year to 29 months for foreign nationals who graduate from U.S. colleges with science and technology degrees.

They argue that the plan to aid foreign students would, in the end, hurt U.S. workers, particularly those in the IT field. These groups and other critics of the H-1B program have long argued that it has created unfair competition for jobs and deprived American workers of employment opportunities. The lawsuit claims that the visa extension for foreign college graduates will exacerbate the harm caused by the H-1B program, and that the administration exceeded its legal authority by stretching the student-visa rules.

In August, a federal judge in New Jersey refused to block the extension, citing arguments raised by the government that question whether the plaintiffs had legal standing to file the lawsuit. Both sides recently filed court papers on that issue in advance of an expected ruling by the judge later this year. The arguments over legal standing  may come down to whether tech workers have been affected by the Bush administration's decision.

The government contends that the injuries cited by the plaintiffs are "speculative" in nature. But the Programmers Guild argues that "economic competition is an injury-in-fact," and that the student-visa extension "specifically targets the fields in which plaintiffs work." 
 
For more on the state of H-1B visas:
- see this Computerworld.com article