With the current acrimony and mean-spiritedness over immigration, no reader would be faulted for thinking that this article will report on plans by a posse of nativist vigilantes and rogue immigration officers to corral and string up a passel of American employers for perceived violations of visa rules. But that is not this article. Rather, the authors offer a recap for employers of key events this year in business immigration. With virtually no immigration reform legislation coming out of Congress, most legal developments in the immigration arena in 2011 have been in other venues: the courts, the agencies and various state legislatures which—by default—have tried to fill the vacuum caused by federal failures to regulate immigration.

1. H-1B employers are bullish on the economy. The annual H-1B visa quota for specialty-occupation workers was exhausted in November, much sooner than many observers had forecast—two months earlier in the cycle than last year and sooner than in any fiscal year since 2008, when the financial crisis led to a sharp downturn in hiring. Demand was up despite this being the first H-1B filing season since Congress imposed a $2,000 supplemental U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services filing fee on employers with 50 or more employees in the United States, more than 50 percent of whom are in H-1B or L-1 status.

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