On April 2, 2018 the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will start accepting applications for one of the most popular U.S. work visas, H-1B, for fiscal year (FY) 2019. Our [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the February 2018 Visa Bulletin which is the fifth Visa Bulletin for the FY2018 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the continued [...]
After months of speculation and discussion, USCIS has taken the initial steps in the rulemaking process in order to take away the H-4 EAD work authorization for certain H-4 spouses which had been available since 2015. It should be noted that this is an initial step in the rulemaking process and until and [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the January 2018 Visa Bulletin which is the fourth Visa Bulletin for the FY2018 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the continued anemic forward movement [...]
In a November 11, 2017 Policy Memorandum, USCIS has formally adopted a recent AAO decision in Matter of V-S-G Inc. and has provided guidance on its impact on AC21 beneficiaries where the underlying I-140 immigrant petition is being revoked. The new policy memorandum states that beneficiaries who have properly ported their green card process to [...]
USCIS has been very active and relentless in raising the Wage Level I issue in many thousands (if not tens of thousands) of requests for evidence (“RFE”) since June 2017. It has become evident that a successful Wage Level [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the December 2017 Visa Bulletin which is the third Visa Bulletin for the FY2018 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the extremely slow forward movement in [...]
Our recent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service ("USCIS") processing times reports indicate that employment-based I-485 adjustment of status ("AOS") applications are taking over a year to adjudicate. The new requirement for in-person interview for certain I-485 cases will likely add to the processing time of a case. At the same time, the required I-693 [...]
In an October 23, 2017 Memorandum, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service ("USCIS") has issued a Policy Memorandum which eliminates the current practice of giving deference to prior approvals when adjudicating Form I-129 petition renewals where the petitioner, the beneficiary and the material facts of the petition remain unchanged. This affects all I-129 petitions extensions, [...]
The Department of State has revised the DV-2019 Diversity Visa (a.k.a. “green card”) lottery dates. The new dates for submission for this year’s lottery must be submitted electronically between noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4), Wednesday, October 18, 2017, and noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT-5), on Wednesday, November 22, 2017. Previously, the DV-2019 lottery [...]
