The confusion stems from a May memo issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that appeared to instruct many temporary visa holders living in the United States to leave the country and wait abroad while their green card applications were processed. That would mark a sharp departure from long-standing federal practice, which generally allows eligible immigrants already in the country to apply for permanent residency through a process known as adjustment of status without leaving the U.S.

More than 500,000 people nationwide apply for green cards each year through adjustment of status while already living in the country. California accounted for nearly one in five green cards issued in the United States in 2023, underscoring the potential impact of any major policy shift on residents, businesses and families here.

Employers, especially in the technology sector, warned that requiring workers to depart while awaiting permanent residency could disrupt operations and push skilled employees to leave. Immigration advocates also said the change could affect relatives of U.S. citizens, mixed-status families and international students seeking to remain in the country legally.

After criticism from the public and immigration attorneys, the administration walked back the memo, saying it was not intended as a sweeping rule for all applicants. But federal officials have not clearly explained how the policy would be applied, who might be required to leave the country, or whether people with pending applications could be affected.

In a written statement to CalMatters, the Department of Homeland Security said the policy “will have no noticeable impact on highly qualified applicants and skilled professionals who have followed the law.”

Immigration attorneys say the lack of clarity has already caused anxiety among people waiting for green cards and among employers who depend on foreign-born workers.

Patrick Kolasinski, an immigration attorney based in Modesto, said the attempted policy shift has added to a broader sense of unpredictability in the immigration system. He argued that changing the rule in that manner would be unlawful and said immigrants can no longer count on a consistent process.

For California families and workers navigating the permanent residency process, the uncertainty has left many waiting for clearer guidance from the federal government before making life and career decisions that could be affected by the new rules.

Original source: CalMatters

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California appears poised to require employers to take measures meant to prevent and respond to workplace violence after the state Legislature passed sweeping Senate Bill 553 on Tuesday.

The bill, which had met pushback from small business advocates, requires most employers to maintain a log of violent incidents and investigations, train employees on how to report incidents without fear of retaliation and allow any employee to petition for a restraining order, among other provisions.

What the bill does not include, however, is also noteworthy.

Gone from SB 553 is a requirement that employers implement active shooter training, as well as a controversial provision that prohibited businesses “from maintaining policies that require employees who are not dedicated safety personnel to confront active shooters or suspected shoplifters,” as was written in previous versions.

“I’m grateful to my colleagues in the Legislature for standing up for workers and businesses at this time of rising workplace violence,” State Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), the bill’s co-author, said in a statement Tuesday morning. “This groundbreaking bill represents a lengthy negotiation and collaboration between business and labor organizations.”

The bill will now head to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. Newsom has not taken a public position on the bill.

SB 553 initially passed the Senate on May 31 along a 29-8 party line vote and was amended on various occasions, including before its Sept. 1 passage through the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

On that day, Cortese announced that opposition to his bill, chiefly from the California Retailers Assn. and the California Chamber of Commerce, had been dropped.

“Given the recent amendments made, we’ve taken our opposition off and are now moving to neutral on this bill,” Ryan Allain, the California Retailers Assn.’s director of government affairs, said Tuesday morning.

California Retailers Assn. President Rachel Michelin previously said the bill needed to eliminate any wording that would require small businesses to hire either security or loss-prevention personnel.

“I’ve been talking to those small businesses, and they told me they will absolutely close if they have to hire security,” Michelin told The Times in June. “They’re barely hanging on as it is.”

The bill’s language prohibiting businesses from requiring untrained employees to confront shoplifters, which critics said would have required trained security or loss prevention, was removed.

Cortese also carved out a concession for small businesses that employ 10 or fewer workers and are not generally open to the public. They join healthcare and corrections facilities, law enforcement agencies and telework employees who are all exempt from the new regulations.

All other businesses are required to: train workers on how to contact law enforcement or on-site staff assigned to respond to workplace violence, maintain and annually review injury and illness prevention plans, identify who’s responsible for training and protocols, develop plans to address employee violence concerns and create procedures on how to respond to violent emergencies, evacuations and sheltering plans.

The bill was spurred by an apparent lack of protocols in place prior to a mass shooting at a Santa Clara Valley light rail yard in 2021, Cortese said.

A disgruntled former rail employee killed nine co-workers before turning one of his three semiautomatic pistols on himself.

Cortese has also referred to rising violence at workplaces.

In December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that workplace homicides increased more than 20% in 2021, the latest year for which data are available, to 481 deaths. That number topped the previous five-year high of 458 in 2017. Of those deaths, 387 involved a shooting. Cal/OSHA noted that the number of California workplace homicides in 2021 was 57, with 42 killed by guns.

Nonfatal workplace violence figures vary. The U.S. Department of Justice released a report last year that found, on average between 2015 and 2019, “1.3 million nonfatal violent crimes in the workplace occurred annually.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 37,060 nonfatal workplace injuries in 2020 “resulting from an intentional injury by another person.”

As Cortese’s bill awaits the governor’s signature, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, which regulates workplace safety in the state, is also considering standards and guidelines that include workplace violence prevention.

Cal/OSHA has been working on a plan since 2017 that was slowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency held three advisory meetings in 2017 and 2018, but only one since then.

Cortese’s staff has said, “SB 553 would accelerate the creation of this standard by placing it into effect on July 1, 2024.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers posted a record 11.5 million job openings in March, meaning the United States now has an unprecedented two job openings for every person who is unemployed.

The latest data released Tuesday by the the Bureau of Labor Statistics further reveals an extraordinarily tight labor market that has emboldened millions of Americans to seek better paying jobs, while also contributing to the biggest inflation surge in four decades.

A record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in March — a sign that they are confident they can find better pay or improved working conditions elsewhere.

Layoffs, which has been running around 1.8 million a month before the pandemic hit the economy in early 2020, ticked up to 1.4 million in March from 1.35 million in February.

The U.S. job market is on a hot streak. Employers have added an average of more than 540,000 jobs a month for the past year. The Labor Department is expected to report Friday that the economy generated another 400,000 new jobs in April, according to a survey by the data firm FactSet. That would mark an unprecedented 12th straight month that hiring has come in at 400,000 or more.

The U.S. economy and job market roared back with unexpected strength from 2020′s brief but devastating coronavirus recession, fueled by massive government spending and super-low interested rates engineered by the Federal Reserve.

Caught off guard by the sudden rebound in consumer demand, companies scrambled to hire workers and stock their shelves. They were forced to raise wages, and factories, ports and freight yards were overwhelmed with traffic. The result has been shipping delays and higher prices.

In March, consumer prices rose 8.5% from a year earlier — the hottest inflation since 1981.

Where things go from here is uncertain. The Fed is raising short-term interest rates to combat inflation. The COVID-19 stimulus from the federal government is gone. And the war in Ukraine has clouded the economic outlook.

Despite strong hiring, the United States is still 1.6 million short of the jobs it had in February 2020, just before the coronavirus hit the economy; and that shortfall does not take into account the additional jobs that should have been added by a growing population.

For now anyway, the job market looks strong.

“Employees have strong job security and confidence in their ability to find new work,″ said Nick Bunker, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “The labor market is still very much a job seeker’s market. Something dramatic will have to happen for this to change anytime soon.″

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Jobspeaker.com provides MSJC a skills-based platform that enables regional employers to post their positions that students can then view through a well-organized job search.

The new job board — at MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from “nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com” claiming to be https://msjc.jobspeaker.com — also provides employers and students an easy-to-use interface both via desktop and mobile. Any employer in the area looking to hire MSJC students can begin posting to Jobspeaker today. Students can easily log on by using their single sign-on MSJC credentials.

The college is paying for the service with funding from Strong Workforce, a state initiative aimed at developing more workforce opportunity and lifting low-wage workers into living-wage jobs through Career Education.

Mt. San Jacinto College | Contributed

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