It is only Tuesday and this week has already been full of immigration proposals. After yesterday's announcement for a blueprint for a comprehensive immigration reform, today a group of Senators has released an actual draft bill which picks up where yesterday's proposal left off with respect to employment-based immigration. Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Amy [...]
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 [...]
We wrote extensively in the past for the planned and the announced USCIS fee increase which is set to take effect on November 23rd for all applications filed or postmarked on or beyond this date. For some filings, the fee increase is very minor (and for some there is even a fee decrease!). However, due [...]
We wrote earlier in the summer about USCIS' plans and proposed rule to increase certain filing fees. The final rule was published a few days ago in the Federal Register and the new increased filing fees are set to go into effect on November 23, 2010. Increases (and a few decreases) in USCIS Filing Fees [...]
USCIS released the weekly FY2011 information on the numbers of cap-subject H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of August 20, 2010, USCIS has received approximately 33,900 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap (a substantial increase of 4,200 over the past week). Similarly, as of August 20, there were 12,600 H-1B visas filed subject to [...]
USCIS released the weekly FY2011 information on the numbers of cap-subject H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of May 21, 2010, USCIS has received approximately 19,600 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap (a weekly increase of only 600). Similarly, as of May 21, there were 8,200 H-1B visas filed subject to the U.S. Masters [...]
USCIS released updated information on the numbers of cap-subject H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of December 10, 2009, USCIS has received approximately 62,500 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap (an increase of 1,000 in the past three days). The updated count means that as of December 10, 2009, there were 2,500 H-1B visas [...]
A recent report by Open Doors, a member of the Institute of International Education provides some numbers and statistics about the foreign students currently in the U.S. According to the report, there are more than 670,000 foreign students in the U.S. – an increase of about 8% over the past academic year. This rate of growth [...]
USCIS released updated information on the numbers of cap-subject H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of November 13, 2009, USCIS has received approximately 55,600 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap (an increase of 900 in a week). USCIS will continue to accept petitions subject to the general cap. U.S. Masters Degrees Quota Reached USCIS has received [...]
The Department of Labor (”DOL”) has released a quarterly report covering the second quarter of 2009 (ending on June 31, 2009) which report indicates the performance measurements for four categories of labor certifications performed by DOL: H-1B Labor Condition Applications (”LCA”). The target performance rate set by DOL is seven (business) days. For the second quarter, [...]