The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) is set to begin accepting H-1B visa applications pursuant to its Fiscal Year 2012 (FY2012) quota. The first day on which USCIS will accept new, cap-subject H-1B petitions, is April 1, 2011. About the H-1B Program and the Annual Cap The H-1B visa category was created in 1990 [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the March 2011 Visa Bulletin which is the sixth Visa Bulletin for the FY2011 fiscal year. The major headline in the upcoming month’s bulletin is the major (additional) retrogression in family-based second A preference visa numbers, accompanied by the continued slow forward movement across the employment-based categories. The retrogression [...]
Many of our readers are aware that as of January 26, 2011, USCIS has received a sufficient number of H-1B cap-subject petitions to fill the annual H-1B quota. All cap-subject new H-1B petitions received by USCIS on or after January 27 will be rejected. Throughout the entire H-1B cap season, our office was providing weekly [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the February 2011 Visa Bulletin which is the fifth Visa Bulletin for the FY2011 fiscal year and first for the calendar year. The major headline in the upcoming month’s bulletin is the major retrogression in family-based visa numbers, accompanied by the continued slow forward movement across the employment-based categories. [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the January 2011 Visa Bulletin which is the fourth Visa Bulletin for the FY2011 fiscal year and first for the calendar year. The major headline in the upcoming month's bulletin is the major retrogression in family-based visa numbers, accompanied by the continued slow forward movement across the employment-based categories. [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the December 2010 Visa Bulletin which is the third Visa Bulletin for the FY2011 fiscal year. As anticipated and as we wrote recently, following our meeting with Charles Oppenheim, there is not much movement across the employment-based categories. EB India, for example, does not see any movement this month. [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the November 2010 Visa Bulletin which is the second Visa Bulletin for the new FY2011 fiscal year. As anticipated and as we wrote recently, following our meeting with Charles Oppenheim, there is not much movement across the employment-based categories, while some family-based categories have notable forward movement. Summary of [...]
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 [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the October 2010 Visa Bulletin which is the first Visa Bulletin for the new FY2011 fiscal year. As always, the first Visa Bulletin for the fiscal year is anticipated to suggest possible trends of movement of the visa numbers over the next months, especially following the past Visa Bulletins' [...]
The September 2010 Visa Bulletin was just released by the State Department. The last visa bulletin for the fiscal year 2010 brings some forward movement across all categories, with the exception of EB-3 India. Summary of the September 2010 Visa Bulletin – Employment-Based (EB) Below is a summary of the September 2010 Visa Bulletin with [...]