The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has announced the creation of a separate office which would be tasked with overseeing the EB-5 immigrant investor program. Yesterday, July 18, 2012, USCIS Director Mayorkas announced that his agency has and will continue to increase the number of staff dedicated to the EB-5 immigrant investor program. This [...]
We have been monitoring developments around the H.R. 3012 legislation aimed at removing the per-country annual limits for the immigrant visa categories. We have written extensively in the past and many of our clients and readers are very interested in any developments with H.R. 3012 because of its wide (and significant) impact on employment-based immigrant [...]
The Brookings Institute has completed and released an interesting report (PDF document, accompanied by interactive charts) on the H-1B program. The report aims to provide a deeper analysis of the H-1B program and to understand the issues and the competitive advantages (or lack thereof) of one of the H-1B work visa which is the most [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the August 2012 Visa Bulletin which is the eleventh Visa Bulletin for the FY2012 fiscal year. The major headline in the upcoming month’s bulletin is the continued unavailability in the EB-2 India and China categories (which is expected to continue for at least one more months), the unchanged [...]
Our office closely monitors developments here in Washington, DC on the proposal to lift the per-country limitations on immigrant visas (green cards). Throughout the past couple of weeks, there have been significant developments on this proposal and we wanted to update our clients and readers. H.R. 3012 Background H.R. 3012, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants [...]
Many of our readers are aware that as of June 11, 2012, USCIS has received a sufficient number of H-1B cap-subject petitions to fill the annual H-1B quota. All cap-subject new H-1B petitions received by USCIS on or after June 12th will be rejected. Throughout the entire H-1B cap season, our office was providing weekly [...]
The U.S. State Department has just released the July 2012 Visa Bulletin which is the tenth Visa Bulletin for the FY2012 fiscal year. The major headline in the upcoming month’s bulletin is the introduction of a cutoff date for the EB-2 ROW category and the continued unavailability in the EB-2 India and China categories (which [...]
The H-1B season may be just starting its third month today, but we see that the H-1B is about to be reached for this year in a 7-10 days. As of June 1, 2012, USCIS has received approximately 55,600 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap, an increase of 10,200 for the past reported week [...]
The H-1B season may be still only in its second month, but we are starting to see the end of the H-1B caps for this year. As of May 25, 2012, USCIS has received approximately 48,400 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap, an increase of 6,400 for the past reported week. This suggests an [...]
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) launched earlier today Preparing for the Oath: U.S. History and Civics for Citizenship, a Web-based learning tool designed to help immigrants prepare for the civics portion of the naturalization test. Designed as a self-study tool, Preparing for the [...]