News that impacts global talent mobility emerges from every industry and corner of the world. That news is also driven by a diverse community of specialists within the mobility industry shaping the future of work. Mobility Minute launched last year to bring this news to you every other week. With this edition, Mobility Minute moves to a weekly with a commitment to increase both the breadth and timeliness of our coverage. If you like what you see, share this e-mail with a colleague. If you don’t like what you see, have tips or ideas, let us know.
What's happening?
Here's a quick glimpse of what you'll find in this week's Mobility Minute:
Registration Open for 2022 CRP® exam
Global Talent Mobility is Supported by Changing Laws
Immigration Policies Expanded to Strengthen U.S. Economy and Competitiveness
Employers are holding on to office space despite hybrid work policies
Registration Open for 2022 CRP® exam
The deadline to apply to sit for the CRP® is April 29, 2022. This will be the ONLY opportunity to sit for the CRP exam this year. The Worldwide ERC® Certified Relocation Professional (CRP®) designation is the only credential dedicated to identifying professionals that demonstrate a broad understanding of managing employee mobility within the United States.
Global Talent Mobility is Supported by Changing Laws
To compete in the global economy, companies are building geographically dispersed teams that offer the best expertise from around the world. These teams bring together people from many cultures with varied work experiences and perspectives on strategic and organizational challenges globally.
Governments understand the importance of globally diverse teams, and many are passing laws and creating visa categories that will make recruiting international talent easier.
France has introduced a new visa for entrepreneurs
Germany is now considering a points-based visa system to attract skilled talent
Japan offers a visa category aimed mainly, but not exclusively, at tech talent
More than 260 million university graduates will hit the global labor markets in the next ten years. The growing talent pool is willing to relocate, with 50% of international talents reporting they remain willing to move to seek better job opportunities elsewhere.
Ultimately, if domestic talent isn’t interested in working for your company, you’ll struggle to attract foreign talent. To build a globally diverse team, companies should introduce a smooth, remote hiring process for digital talent and targeted relocation packages that help recruits with housing support and ensure better retention of its globalizing workforce.
Major Investment Firms Target Bosses at Firms that Fail to Meet Environmental Pledges
Asset Management firms Blackrock and Aviva Investors are both taking a hard line with corporations on sustainability. Aviva warns in their annual letter to chairpersons that mitigating environmental impacts will be a key driver of company valuations. The company will use its votes to oust directors who do not take the challenge seriously and is pushing to link CEO compensation to sustainability goals. Blackrock, which once faced down criticism for inaction on climate change, has told firms it invests in to step up or face the consequences.
Logistics Giants Pour Millions into Remote-Operated Forklifts
Labor shortages have supply chain and logistics companies turning to remote control forklifts which can be operated from off-site, to include prospective employees’ homes. While autonomous forklifts can perform a range of functions, human operators are required to load and unload trailers and place palettes and variable heights.
Logistics companies and retailers are running out of places to store what goods they have wrested from the lurching supply chain. As warehouse space is sought far inland from coastal ports and rents skyrocket, many companies are contracting every empty space they can find long before they have product to fill it.
Immigration Policies Expanded to Strengthen US Economy and Competitiveness
Over the years, immigration guidance and procedures have become so inflexible that employers risk losing vital international employees working in emerging science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The newly announced guidance on O-1A visas, National Interest Waivers, and foreign student visa programs signals that the US government is trying to keep up with the rapidly changing academic environment. The expansion of immigration policies benefits STEM degree students and graduates. The new guidelines affect the F-1 student, J-1 exchange visitor, and O-1 extraordinary ability nonimmigrant visa categories, as well as the EB-2 National Interest Waiver immigrant visa category.
Get the Facts:
O-1A visas are for individuals with extraordinary abilities in the sciences, education, business, or athletics. The new update provides examples of evidence that may satisfy the O-1A evidentiary criteria and discusses considerations relevant to evaluating such evidence.
J-1 undergraduate and pre-doctoral students are typically eligible for up to 18 months of additional academic training. The program now allows academic sponsors to request up to 36 months of STEM-related academic training for college and university students pursuing STEM degrees.
F-1 students are eligible for up to one year of post-graduate Optional Practical Training (OPT).F-1 students who graduate with a STEM degree are eligible for an additional two years of OPT (STEM OPT) that will include 22 new academic fields of study.
EB-2 or National Interest Waiver is a method of obtaining an employment visa that provides permanent residency without an employer as a sponsor. The policy update clarifies how immigrants with advanced degrees in STEM fields can use the national interest waiver and expands national interest waivers for immigrant entrepreneurs and potentially for a broader range of highly skilled individuals with STEM expertise.
Shadow Sanctions for Immigration Violations “With 11 million deportable noncitizens and the capacity to remove roughly 400,000 per year,” the American immigration system chooses which subset to export, writes Prof. Shalini Bhargava Ray. The vast majority of noncitizens receive some form of forbearance such as deferred action, administrative closures, and post-order stays. Reforms that would better serve both the country and the noncitizen should explicitly set forth the government’s purpose and the economic interests of all stakeholders. Lexis Nexis
Immigration Critics Wrong: Fewer Visas Did Not Help U.S. Workers Restrictive immigration policies that greatly limited the number of new foreign-born workers in the U.S. may have done far more to harm the American workers than help them. Rather than limiting competition for jobs, the worker shortage has contributed to empty shelves and business slow-downs that have throttled economic recovery and job growth. Forbes
U.S. Citizenship Applicants in Limbo with Immigration Files Locked in Caves Underground In vast limestone caverns 60 feet beneath the Kansas soil, hundreds of thousands of paper immigration files languish as applicants for U.S. Citizenship wait. The Federal Records Centers used by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were closed due to COVID restrictions and have only recently re-opened with staffing at 25%. As of January 2022, the skeleton crews are facing more than 350,000 requests for immigration records. Immigration Impact
Ontario Skilled Trades Alliance pushes for immigration reform to strengthen construction workforce With the infrastructure funding in place and a housing crisis to address, Ontario is desperate to find enough skilled construction workers to meet demand. The Ontario Skilled Trades Alliance recently passed several resolutions encouraging the Canadian government to increase the cap on temporary foreign workers and double the cap on the Ontario immigrant Nominee Program. HRD
Immigration Court Case Backlog Explodes The U.S. Immigration Court System is grappling with more than 1.5 million pending cases—the largest backlog in its history, and that number is only growing. The average wait for a hearing date now stretches to 54 months. Even if immigration enforcement were halted entirely today, it would take more than Biden’s first term in office to complete the backlog in hand. Lexis Nexis, TRACImmigration
A survey of 445 U.S. firms in October 2021 found that those who shifted to hybrid work were seeing a 30% or more reduction in days employees were on-site. Despite the reduced need, there are few plans to reduce office space.
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