On November 23, 2010, the pre-announced increase in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service ("USCIS") filing fees went into effect. All applications and petitions filed must now include the new and correct filing fee, or the filings will be rejected. We have written in the past about the need of this fee increase and our [...]
Our office continues to handle an increasing number of naturalization and citizenship applications so it is interesting to share with our clients and readers some recent numbers on the citizenship statistics for Fiscal Year 2009 (FY2009). During FY2009, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) received 743,715 applications for naturalization (in comparison to the 1,046,539 during [...]
On Tuesday, July 20th, AILA filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) seeking the release of records concerning agency policies and procedures for the H-1B visa program. AILA had attempted to obtain these documents under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request which had been denied [...]
Our office has fielded numerous calls from a number of foreign nationals who are in the U.S. temporarily and whose departure plans have been disrupted by the infamous Icelandic volcano ash. For many in the U.S. whose departure travel arrangements were closely related to their I-94 expiration date, the disruption and delay in departure travel [...]
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) is set to begin accepting H-1B visa applications pursuant to its Fiscal Year 2011 (FY2011) quota. The first day on which USCIS will accept new, cap-subject H-1B petitions, is April 1, 2010. About the H-1B Program and the Annual Cap The H-1B visa category was created in 1990 [...]
Over the past months we have written extensively about the issues raised by today’s Wall Street Journal article “Slump Sinks Visa Program” but it is still an interesting read. Most of our readers are aware of the current H-1B quota and the fact that a substantial number of H-1B visas still remain available (for comparison, [...]
We wrote in September about the gap in expected revenue by USCIS following the filing fee increase of Summer 2007. We noted that the agency has a $282 million shortfall in expected revenues. As a result of the announced 2007 fee increase, USCIS saw a surge in applications and hiring in 2007, ahead of a hefty [...]
There has been quite a bit of legal activity in connection with the Bush administration executive order requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees as well as current employees directly working on a contract. Rule Goes Into Effect on September 8, 2009 On August 26, 2009, a U.S. [...]