Many nonimmigrants in the U.S. have been eagerly awaiting news about the proposed introduction of a process to allow U.S. visa stamp issuance from within the U.S. On October 17, 2023, the Department of State (DOS) announced that they are planning to lay out more details about the process with possible start date of a [...]
The U.S. State Department has released the November 2023 Visa Bulletin which is the second Visa Bulletin for the new fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is lack of pretty much any movement in almost all [...]
The Department of State has announced the DV-2025 Diversity Visa (a.k.a. “green card”) lottery dates. The dates for electronic entry submission for this year’s lottery are between noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4), Wednesday, October 4, 2023, and noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT-5), on Tuesday, November 7, 2023. Applicants may access the electronic Diversity [...]
Our office handles many ETA Form 9089 Permanent Labor Certification (“PERM”) applications and one of the most common questions is what is an overview of the entire PERM process and how long it would take. Below we are [...]
Starting October 1, 2023 USCIS is removing the biometrics requirement (and fee) for all I-539 applications seeking to change of extend status. As a reminder, the biometrics requirement and fee were created in 2019 and in 2021 USCIS removed [...]
Unlawful presence is defined in Section 212(a)(9)(B)(ii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to mean that an alien is deemed to be unlawfully present in the U.S. if the alien is (1) present after the expiration [...]
Many of our clients and readers have been anxiously awaiting news from Washington, DC regarding the funding of the federal government and the threat of shutdown and how it would impact immigration processing. We are providing an overview [...]
The U.S. State Department has released the October 2023 Visa Bulletin which is the first Visa Bulletin for the new fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa [...]
With the recent increase of remote or hybrid work arrangements, and the return to office to third-party client sites, we would like to provide a reminder of the relevant H-1B rules for compliance when changing (or having already [...]
Many of our readers are aware of the extraordinary demand for first-time H-1B "cap" registrations over the past few years and especially after USCIS introduced a pre-registration system during the 2021 fiscal year. Under the previous H-1B "cap" filing system, a petition would have to prepare and submit a full H-1B petition (with [...]
