The U.S. State Department has just released the January 2017 Visa Bulletin which is the fourth Visa Bulletin for the new FY2017 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the anemic forward movement across many categories, including the slowing movement [...]
The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) has just released the final text (also copy of Federal Register version) of the rule seeking to improve certain aspects of the employment-based immigration system. The new rule [...]
On November 14, 2016, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a revised version of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification which is available to use starting immediately. Starting Jan. 22, 2017, employers must use only the new version, dated 11/14/2016 N. Until then, they can continue to use the version dated 03/08/2013 N or the new [...]
During the election campaign, President-elect Trump put immigration at the center of his agenda and platform and made a commitment to the voters to take immediate steps relating to immigration upon taking office on January 20, 2017. There are certain immigration-related steps that [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the December 2016 Visa Bulletin which is the third Visa Bulletin for the new FY2017 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the anemic [...]
The Department of Homeland Security has just released the final rule announcing the increase of most of the Citizenship and Immigration (USCIS) application filing fees. The weighted average of the increase is 21 percent and USCIS is adding one new [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the November 2016 Visa Bulletin which is the second Visa Bulletin for the new FY2017 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the fact that EB-2 India and China advance [...]
While few, if any, of our clients and readers spent too much time planning and celebrating, October 1st is an important date as it marks the beginning of the new government fiscal year. This has new fiscal year turnover has immigration implications for many — for example, H-1B cap petitions are becoming effective [...]
The Department of State will open the DV-2018 Diversity Visa (a.k.a. “green card”) lottery on Tuesday, October 4, 2016. The entries for this year’s lottery must be submitted electronically between noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4), Tuesday, October 4, [...]
Many of our readers are aware of the way first-time H-1B work visas are allocated – via a random lottery conducted as part of each year’s H-1B cap filing season in early April. The way the lottery is conducted has been kept secret and [...]
