As we are about to get into the peak of the U.S. election season, some of the U.S. presidential candidates have expressed opinions on immigration, in connection with the campaign, or previously, and it is natural for some foreign citizens, both living in the U.S. and abroad, to be interested in contributing money and/or services [...]
Many employers and F-1 STEM students have been anxiously expecting a draft of the proposed STEM OPT extension rule which had to be rushed as a result of the August 2015 District Court decision invalidating the existing 2008 STEM [...]
The last few weeks have brought a lot of attention to the way the Visa Bulletin cutoff dates are allocated and how USCIS uses the dates to accept I-485 filings. Starting with the initial version of the October 2015 Visa Bulletin in early September, and throughout the subsequent October 2015 Visa Bulletin revision and litigation, [...]
Our office handles many ETA Form 9089 – Permanent Labor Certification (“PERM”) applications and we are closely monitoring the current PERM processing times not only for the benefit of our clients but also to be able to predict longer-term trends in PERM processing. [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the November 2015 Visa Bulletin which is the second Visa Bulletin for the new FY2016 fiscal year. The major headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the lack of any movement whatsoever in the Filing cutoff dates section of the Visa Bulletin, possibly caused by the October [...]
September 30, 2015 was the last day on which the additional filing fee required to be paid by certain H-1B dependent employers was required. The Public Law 111-230 additional filing fee of $2,000 was required to be paid [...]
While few, if any, of our clients and readers will be planning major celebrations, October 1st is an important date as it marks the beginning of the new government fiscal year. This has some immigration implications for many folks — for example, H-1B cap petitions are becoming effective and the quotas for green [...]
The Department of State will open the DV-2017 Diversity Visa (a.k.a. “green card”) lottery on Thursday, October 1, 2015. The entries for this year’s lottery must be submitted electronically between noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4), Thursday, October 1, 2015, and noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT-5), Tuesday, November 3, 2015. Applicants may access [...]
Just a few minutes ago, and just a few days before the October 2015 Visa Bulletin were to become effective, the U.S. State Department has released a revision to the October 2015 Visa Bulletin. EB-2 India and China applicants, many of whom were the primary beneficiaries of the October 2015 Visa Bulletin two-tier cutoff date [...]
Applicants for U.S. immigration benefits have faced (or will face) at some point in the process the need to provide a birth certificate. Both U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (“USCIS”) and the U.S. Department of State (“DOS”) require applicants to submit a birth [...]
