About the EB-5 Visa and Regional Centers Under section 203(b)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5), 10,000 immigrant visas per year are available to qualified individuals seeking permanent resident status on the basis of their engagement in a new commercial enterprise (generally of at least $1 million). Of the 10,000 investor [...]
The annual green card lottery, DV-2010, opens today at noon eastern time. The deadline for submission is noon, eastern time, on Monday, December 1, 2008. Although early application does not increase the chances of being selected, we have seen in the past years the lottery site overloaded with web traffic in the last days or [...]
October 1 is exactly one week away, and there are many H-1B applicants who have already had their petitions approved and are waiting eagerly the start of their H-1B period. However, there are a number of applicants who have been picked in the lottery but have not yet received anything from USCIS regarding their H-1B [...]
The Department of Homeland Security has released a report with a number of statistical breakdowns of admissions into the U.S. of nonimmigrants for 2007. According to the DHS, there were 171 million nonimmigrant admissions into the U.S. in 2007. The numbers show entries in the U.S. broken down by visa type, port of entry, age [...]
By statute (8 CFR § 274a.13), USCIS is required to adjudicate all EAD applications within 90 days from the date of USCIS receipt of the application. However, the spike in employment-based green card applications during the summer of 2007 has brought a somewhat expected wave of backlogs - in the EAD processing. USCIS allows an EAD [...]
Mark your calendars - the DV-2010 lottery (green card lottery) dates have been announced - online applications for the lottery must be submitted between Noon EDT on October 2, 2008 and Noon EST on December 1, 2008. Although information and instructions have not been posted yet, they should be posted shortly on the Department of State [...]
Problem: students on Curricular Practical Training (CPT) are always sent to secondary verification by E-Verify. From our own practice and from statistics released by the government, it is clear that more and more employers are signing up for E-Verify, some in response to federal or state regulations, some on their own effort to maintain a compliant [...]
USCIS has released the numbers of citizenship applications filed for the first six months of 2008. For the period January-June 2008, on average, there were approximately 46,000 citizenship applications each month. As a comparison, the monthly average for the same period in 2007 was approximately 115,000 citizenship applications. This marks a decline in the average [...]
The Government Accountability Office has released its report on the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) and its implementation and operation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The report seeks to assess the operation of the program and to analyze DHS’s efforts to expand it. The GAO report found, among other things that although the government is [...]
The October 2008 Visa Bulletin is out. Unfortunately, it does not bring much, if any, good news. The most important change in October 2008 is the retrogression of EB-2 India and EB-2 China. Based on predictions of the demand of these categories, the cutoff dates have been moved, effective October 1, 2008, as follows: for [...]