The U.S. State Department has just released the December 2013 Visa Bulletin which is the third Visa Bulletin for the FY2014 fiscal year. The major headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the major (over 3.5 years) retrogression in EB-2 India, the significant (1 year) forward movement for EB-3 ROW and the fact that [...]
A recent article for Yahoo Finance entitled, Can a Bad Debt Get You Deported? discusses the implications of bad credit or unpaid bills to the immigration process. Founder and principal attorney Dimo Michailov was consulted for article and quoted throughout the article. “Normally, the United States does not look at credit” when considering visa applications, [...]
USCIS has circulated a proposed draft of a redesigned and revised Form I-129 and has opened a public comment period on the proposed changes. The new form features a new design layout where most of the questions are the same but laid out slightly differently. There are some changes to the wording of some questions, [...]
Anyone who has ever filed a petition of some sort with USCIS has wondered, "How long would I have to wait to get a response from USCIS on my application?" Chances are that such an applicant has used the online status check and has also checked the “normal” processing times for the type of a [...]
The large Indian technology company Infosys has agreed to pay $34 million in a civil settlement after federal prosecutors in Texas alleged it had committed "systemic visa fraud and abuse" when bringing temporary workers to the U.S. on H-1B and B-1 visas. This kind of settlement is the largest ever in a visa case and [...]
Our office just came back from a discussion session here in Washington, DC with Charles Oppenheim. Mr. Oppenheim is the Chief of the Visa Control and Reporting Division at the U.S. Department of State. For many, he is simply known as the person responsible for the monthly and annual visa number allocations for family- and [...]
As an E-Verify designated agent, the Capitol Immigration Law Group handles the E-Verify processing for many employers and we would like to pass on some important post-government shutdown E-Verify information to our clients and to all companies who are working with E-Verify. Most importantly, USCIS has confirmed that the E-Verify system is now back online [...]
A very common question by the holders of visas which have employment restrictions is, “Can I engage in unpaid volunteer work under my visa?” We deal with this question on a daily basis when we are asked by clients whether someone who is in the U.S. (on a status which does not allow employment) [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the November 2013 Visa Bulletin which is the second Visa Bulletin for the FY2014 fiscal year. The major headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is that there is no movement for any EB India categories and the fact that FB-2A remains unchanged with a (relatively) recent cutoff [...]
Our office has established a reputation as one of the leading practices for handling appeals with the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) and we often receive inquiries not only about the procedural aspects of an AAO appeal but also about the current processing times for AAO cases. The AAO processing times are published monthly, at the [...]
