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, [...]
The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Foreign Labor Certification has released its October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2008 (FY’08) statistics on PERM processing. Although these are statistical estimates and not official results, the numbers are expected to be very close to the final official numbers. We wrote about PERM’s FY’08 mid-year statistics in [...]
With the Visa Waiver Program’s (VWP) recent expansion and the upcoming mandatory use of the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) after January 12, 2009, we wanted to review the passport requirements for visa-free travel to the U.S. under VWP. Passports Issued on or After October 26, 2006. Any passport issued by a VWP country on [...]
President Bush just announced that the Department of Homeland Security has notified Congress that the administration intends to admit seven new countries into the Visa Waiver Program. The new countries are Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and South Korea. The exact date of the visa waiver program eligibility for these countries is expected [...]
USCIS has announced that the maximum period of time a TN visa holder can remain in the U.S. from one (1) year to three (3) years. The TN initial period is now equal to the three (3) year initial period of admission granted to H-1B holders. About the TN Visa The TN nonimmigrant classification is visa category [...]
The November 2008 Visa Bulletin is out. There are no surprises, although for many foreign nationals, who have an employment-based petition filed and pending, the update would not bring much joy. If we could sum the results of the November 2008 Visa Bulletin, it would be “slow forward movement.” According to the State Department (which is [...]