The United States has made a small-but-important change to the E-3 visa, an instrument that allows skilled Australians to work in the nation.

The E-3 is similar to the controversial H1-B visa, as it allows skilled workers to ply their trade stateside and can be renewed every two years, indefinitely. Australians can't score the visa and then head to the USA and start job-hunting: one must have an employer willing to offer you a job before applying. You also need to have the US Department of Labor issue a Labor Condition Application.

But once you get that and a job offer, you're in for two years.

The new change to the visa means that at the expiration of the visa, you can now keep working in the USA for an extra 240 days - provided you already applied for an extension. Previously, E-3 holders had to stop working as soon as their visas expired, even if they had already applied for an extension.

The relaxation of the E-3 red tape also applies to the H1B-1 visa for Singaporeans. Both Australia and Singapore scored special visas as thank-yous for help in the Gulf War and as part of their free trade agreements with the USA.

Easier access to visas for Singaporeans and Australians will grate in India, as the announcement by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service came three days after it confirmed new and higher fees for the H1-B visa. It now costs US$4000 to apply for those visas, a doubling of the fee seen in India as aimed at making it harder for the the nation's big IT companies to bring workers to the United States.

Technology companies stand accused of using H1-B visas to bring workers from India on salaries that may be a lovely bump for those moving from the sub-continent, but are rather lower than wages paid to US citizens. ®