October 2023 Government Shutdown and Immigration: (How) Will It Affect Me?
Many of our clients and readers have been anxiously awaiting news from Washington, DC regarding the funding of the federal government and the threat of shutdown and how it would impact immigration processing. We are providing an overview of what would happen should or when the federal government closes. The biggest impact for employment-immigration matters is likely to be [...]
October 2023 Visa Bulletin – First Visa Bulletin for Fiscal Year Brings Limited Cutoff Date Recovery; Grim News for EB India
The U.S. State Department has released the October 2023 Visa Bulletin which is the first Visa Bulletin for the new fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the fact that despite wide expectations for significant forward advancement among many employment-based categories, the forward movement is somewhat limited and, in fact, some categories have moved back. EB-2/EB-3 [...]
Do I Have to File H-1B Amendment When Changing (Remote) Worksite Locations?
With the recent increase of remote or hybrid work arrangements, and the return to office to third-party client sites, we would like to provide a reminder of the relevant H-1B rules for compliance when changing (or having already changed) worksite locations. Pursuant to the July 21, 2015 Final Policy Memorandum (see our analysis), an H-1B amendment (and not only an [...]
How to Handle H-1B Revocations Due to Multiple H-1B Cap Registrations
Many of our readers are aware of the extraordinary demand for first-time H-1B "cap" registrations over the past few years and especially after USCIS introduced a pre-registration system during the 2021 fiscal year. Under the previous H-1B "cap" filing system, a petition would have to prepare and submit a full H-1B petition (with full set of fees) for [...]
Second H-1B Cap Lottery Completed; Newly Selected Petitions Must Be Filed by October 31st
USCIS has just completed the second round of the H-1B cap selection lottery and notified the selected applicants. The August 2023 selection round was due to the fact that a (significant) number of H-1B cap registrations selected under the first round (see our report on the staggering number of registrations) did not file an H-1B petition before the June 30th [...]
Important Update on I-9 Policy: Remote Document Inspection Now Permitted
In a world where remote work has become a prevailing norm, traditional processes are evolving to adapt to this new reality. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recognized this shift and recently introduced a groundbreaking policy that allows for remote document inspection in the Form I-9 verification process. This policy not only reflects the changing dynamics [...]