The Department of State will open the DV-2012 Diversity Visa (a.k.a. “green card”) lottery on Thursday, October 5, 2010. The entries for this year’s lottery must be submitted electronically between noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4), Thursday, October 5, 2010, and noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT-5), Wednesday, November 3, 2010. Applicants may access [...]
USCIS released the weekly FY2011 information on the numbers of cap-subject H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of September 17, 2010, USCIS has received approximately 38,300 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap (an increase of 900 over the past week). Similarly, as of September 17, there were 14,000 H-1B visas filed subject to the [...]
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 [...]
Our office often receives inquiries by clients about a piece of information displayed on the ASC Appointment Notices issued for the purpose of capturing biometrics. Our clients are asking us what is the meaning of the "Code" field, found in the top right part of the ASC Appointment Notice. The "Code" field is intended to [...]
USCIS released the weekly FY2011 information on the numbers of cap-subject H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of September 10, 2010, USCIS has received approximately 37,400 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap (an increase of 800 over the past week). Similarly, as of September 10, there were 13,700 H-1B visas filed subject to the [...]
We have previously written extensively about the January 2010 Neufeld Memorandum and the lawsuit filed earlier this year challenging its validity. This lawsuit has been of great interest to most of our clients as the Neufeld memorandum created some new requirements applicable not only to IT consulting companies but to most, if not all, H-1B [...]
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 Los Angeles Times has requested and been able to obtain statistics from USCIS regarding the adjudication rates for H, L, O and P petitions for the Vermont and California Service Centers since Fiscal Year 2008 (FY2008). The statistics are current as of July 2010 and provide a very helpful overview of approval, denial and [...]
USCIS released the weekly FY2011 information on the numbers of cap-subject H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of September 3, 2010, USCIS has received approximately 36,600 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap (an increase of 1,700 over the past week). Similarly, as of September 3, there were 13,400 H-1B visas filed subject to the [...]
We have clients and our office handles a number of U.S. visa applications submitted in Canada. Accordingly, we wish to report on a new appointment service for all U.S. visa applicants in Canada, which becomes effective on September 1, 2010. As of September 1, 2010, all services -- including calling for information and scheduling an [...]