The U.S. Embassy in Russia has announced that starting August 23, 2017, all nonimmigrant visa (NIV) operations across Russia will be suspended. Beginning September 1, 2017, nonimmigrant visa interviews will be conducted only at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and interviews at the St. Petersburg, Yekaterininburg and Vladivostok will be cancelled. What is the Reason [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the September 2017 Visa Bulletin which is the last Visa Bulletin for the FY2017 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is [...]
USCIS appears to be in the process of reinstating premium processing service for H-1B petitions. On July 24, 2017, USCIS announced that they are reinstating premium processing for H-1B petitions filed by cap-exempt employers. Background of the H-1B Premium Processing Service Suspension Effective April 3, 2017, USCIS suspended the premium processing service for all H-1B [...]
Many of our readers follow closely our reports of the monthly Visa Bulletin which provides cutoff dates for those immigrant visa (green card) applicants who are current and have immigrant visa numbers available (i.e. their actual permanent resident “green” card is assigned an available number and can be issued). The past several Visa Bulletins [...]
In a Federal Register announcement dated July 11, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has delayed the effective date of the International Entrepreneur rule from July 17, 2017 to March 14, 2018. Additionally, the notice indicates that this delay will allow USCIS to publish rulemaking seeking to rescind the International Entrepreneur rule altogether, [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the August 2017 Visa Bulletin which is the eleventh Visa Bulletin for the FY2017 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the introduction of a cutoff date for the [...]
Earlier this year USCIS introduced a new Form I-485 Supplement J which is being used in connection with filings of new I-485 applications to adjust status or for porting of existing and pending I-485 applications to a new employer or a new job. The purpose of I-485 Supplement J is to provide a confirmation [...]
Two months after completing the random H-1B cap lottery, USCIS has started mailing back the H-1B cap applications which were not selected under the random H-1B cap lottery. While the H-1B cap receipts for selected cases were sent out by May 3rd, many employers and applicants who had not heard by now had to assume that their [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the July 2017 Visa Bulletin which is the tenth Visa Bulletin for the FY2017 fiscal year. The headline in the upcoming month’s Visa Bulletin is the significant 33-month retrogression in EB-3 [...]
In our office, and in the broader H-1B community, we are seeing instances and reports of H-1B petition RFEs aimed at ensuring compliance with the Simeio-line of guidance issued by USCIS in 2015. Specifically, we are seeing RFEs on H-1B petitions (amendments, mostly, but also for extensions) where USCIS is questioning the timeliness or the [...]
