The U.S. Department of State reported yesterday that it has issued a record high number of F, J and M visas for the fiscal year 2008 - 710,631 in total. This represents a 9.1 percent increase in comparison to fiscal year 2007 and a 26 percent increase in comparison to fiscal year 2001. Among some of [...]
The Texas Service Center (TSC) has introduced a new email procedure that which is available to attorneys who are AILA members and allows the Texas Service Center to identify I-485s and I-140s which have remained pending beyond TSC processing times posted on USCIS’S website. According to the new procedure, which is effective immediately, I-485s are subject [...]
The visa-free travel to the U.S. for certain nationals of Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and South Korea is now effective. The final rule admitting these countries to the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) has been published. One note for nationals of these seven countries who wish to travel to the U.S. under VWP - [...]
We have written about this requirement in the past, but it is now a final rule. Starting January 15, 2009, federal contractors and subcontractors will be required to begin using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ E-Verify system to verify their employees’ eligibility to legally work in the United States. Federal contracts awarded and solicitations issued [...]
We have spoken to clients and written about the slim chances of having an immigration reform early into the upcoming Obama administration. The Wall Street Journal has an article which analyzes the consequences of the changes in Congressional seats as a result of the recent election and how it may affect the immigration reform. Some of [...]
USCIS has released the processing times for naturalization applications as of September 30, 2008. It is worth noting that some offices are noting significant improvement (2 months or more) in comparison to the processing times from few months ago. This is due to the increased efforts by the FBI to clear security checks faster. Office Months Office Months [...]
The December 2008 Visa Bulletin is out. Unfortunately, it does not bring any good news for the employment-based (EB) visa numbers. All EB categories remain unchanged from the November 2008 Visa Bulletin. The lack of any movement of the EB visa numbers is likely due to the high number of filings USCIS has received after the [...]
An article in today’s Washington Post reports on the contract USCIS has signed with IBM to overhaul the way USCIS handles documents. As many of our clients know or have experienced first-hand, the agency’s pre-computer-age paper filing system is extremely frustrating. The current system incurs $100 million a year in archiving, storage, retrieval and shipping [...]
As the dust from the election starts to settle, we have started receiving inquiries about the changes in immigration policy which may be expected from the new Obama-Biden administration. During the pre-election campaign season, the attention spent on immigration policy was close to zero. Amid the financial crisis, Iraq and other domestic and foreign policy issues, [...]
We have received a number of inquiries about H-1B applications which are still pending. For those with such pending applications at the Vermont Service Center, our information, which is as of October 20th, is that there were 4,345 petitions that were part of this fiscal year’s cap and which were not completely adjudicated. Of these, [...]