The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) Ombudsman Office is organizing a listening session regarding the suspension of premium processing for most H-1B petitions. The goal of this session is to hear from the public how the H-1B premium processing suspension [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the November 2018 Visa Bulletin which is the second Visa Bulletin for the FY2019 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin headline is the lack of [...]
Our office has obtained an updated set of expected cutoff date movements over the next several months as we begin the new fiscal year. Mr. Charles Oppenheim who is the Chief of the Visa Control and Reporting [...]
On October 1, 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) began implementing the new policy regarding issuance of Notice to Appear (NTA) regarding certain inadmissible and deportable foreign nationals who are in the U.S. USCIS is [...]
The Department of State has announced the DV-2020 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 3, 2018, and noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT-5), on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Applicants may access the electronic Diversity [...]
In a somewhat surprising move, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) have announced that for October 2018 they will accept the “Filing Dates” for employment-based I-485 applications. This means that a number [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the October 2018 Visa Bulletin which is the first Visa Bulletin for the FY2019 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin headline is [...]
The Department of Homeland Security has announced that they are increasing the I-907 premium processing service filing fee to $1,410. The new premium processing filing fee increase will become effective for all requests mailed, postmarked or otherwise filed on [...]
USCIS has announced that effective September 11, 2018, they are temporarily suspending premium processing for most H-1B petitions until February 19, 2019. All H-1B new employment, transfers and amendments filed with the California or Vermont Service Centers are affected. Only H-1B [...]
What is the status of the H-4 EAD rescission rule? This is a very common question we have been hearing over the past months and, unfortunately, while the government still appears intent on rescinding the H-4 EAD work permit, [...]
