UPDATE: A new revised Final Rule is in effect starting December 23, 2022. Please review this updated content. In light of the Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting millions of workers (at least temporarily) losing their job, our office has been flooded with calls and emails about whether claiming unemployment insurance will give rise to inadmissibility [...]
USCIS has just announced that effective April 1, 2020, they are temporarily suspending premium processing for H-1B cap petitions which are selected under the H-1B lottery. Please note that this suspension applies only to H-1B cap petitions filed under the annual H-1B cap season and it is expected that the premium processing service will be reinstated for all cap [...]
The new H-1B work visa “cap” season is set to begin with substantial changes to the process, the timelines and the chances for success. Over the past year or so, [...]
Spring and early summer are generally busy period for recent foreign college graduates as far as employment immigration is concerned. On one hand, foreign college graduates are either applying for their initial term OPT, their 24-month STEM extensions (if they qualify) or their H-1B work visas under the H-1B cap. Our office fields many questions [...]
The Department of Homeland Security has announced that they are increasing the I-907 premium processing service filing fee by $30 from $1,410 to $1,440. The new premium processing filing fee increase will become effective for all requests mailed, postmarked [...]
While few, if any, of our clients and readers spent too much time planning and celebrating, October 1st is an important date as it marks the beginning of the new government fiscal year. The beginning of the new fiscal year turnover has immigration implications for many — for example, H-1B cap petitions are [...]
Our readers and clients who have been involved in the H-1B program and especially over the last 12+ months must have experienced or at least heard about the "specialty occupation" requests for evidence (RFE) which have been and continue to be issued by USCIS. Our office has been receiving and handling numerous such RFEs [...]
Our readers and clients who have been involved in the H-1B program over the last couple of years (and especially those participating in the H-1B cap filing season) must have experienced or at least heard about the Wage Level I requests for evidence (RFE) which have been and continue to be issued by USCIS. [...]
Many of our readers are aware that as of April 5, 2019, USCIS had received a sufficient number of H-1B cap-subject petitions to fill the annual fiscal year (FY) 2020 H-1B quota (total of 201,000 cap applications). USCIS has just announced that as of May 17, 2019 they have completed the intake process and the [...]
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has announced that they have completed the intake and processing of all of the fiscal year (FY2020) H-1B cap petitions. According to USCIS, there were over 201,011 H-1B cap petitions filed during the April [...]
