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 [...]
USCIS has just officially confirmed as of today, October 3, 2017, they have reinstated the premium processing service for all types of H-1B petitions. Petitions filed under the premium processing service are given a response by USCIS within 15 calendar days. Similarly, pending "regular processing" H-1B petitions can be "upgraded" to premium processing service. [...]
The U.S. Department of State ("DOS") has amended a section of the Field Adjudicators Manual ("FAM") which pertains to government officials' determinations of misrepresentation by applicants and specifically with respect to activities permitted in the U.S. on nonimmigrant visas. 9 FAM 302.9-4(B)(3) has been amended to include a section called "Inconsistent Conduct Within 90 Days [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the October 2017 Visa Bulletin which is the first Visa Bulletin for the FY2018 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is fact [...]
On September 5, 2017, the Trump administration announced that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ("DACA") program will end. DACA will remain in place until March 5, 2018 and the program will be phased out over the next two years. DACA Revocation Details The Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") has released details and clarifications regarding [...]
USCIS has just announced that they are expanding the requirements for interviews to employment-based I-485 adjustment of status applicants. Effective October 1, 2017, USCIS will phase-in interviews for (1) employment-based I-485 adjustment of status applications and (2) refugee/asylee I-730 applications who are in the United States and petitioning to join a principal applicant. Under [...]
Our office has recently learned that USCIS is changing their long-standing practice and have started denying Form I-131 Advance Parole applications due to abandonment in cases where the applicant has left the United States while the I-131 Advance Parole application was pending. USCIS has confirmed that this is their actual current policy going [...]
The U.S. Embassy in Russia has announced that starting August 23, 2017, all nonimmigrant visa (NIV) operations across Russia will be suspended. Beginning September 1, 2017, nonimmigrant visa interviews will be conducted only at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and interviews at the St. Petersburg, Yekaterininburg and Vladivostok will be cancelled. What is the Reason [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the September 2017 Visa Bulletin which is the last Visa Bulletin for the FY2017 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is [...]
