During the annual AILA conference, Mr. Charles Oppenheim of the Department of State Visa Office (he is the person who is largely involved in the movement of visa numbers) provided some thoughts and predictions on the movement of visa numbers for the remainder of the fiscal year 2009 (FY2009 the end of which is September [...]
The July 2009 Visa Bulletin was released today. Unfortunately, as expected, the only change is the EB-2 China category which changed from February 15, 2005 to January 1, 2000. All other categories remain unchanged. Here is a summary of the July 2009 Visa Bulletin: EB-1 remains current across the board. EB-2 remains unchanged for all categories except [...]
We have been informed by USCIS that some legal permanent residency (”green card”) applicants may experience an eight-week delay in receiving their green card. The stated reason is that USCIS is upgrading its card production equipment. For applicants who need to obtain evidence of their permanent residency, the local USCIS offices can issue temporary Form I-551 [...]
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has proposed a change to the way it monitors how employers use E-Verify, the government’s employment verification system. The proposed rule, published in the Federal Register on May 22, 2009, exempts portions of the Department of Homeland Security’s Compliance Tracking and Management System from the Privacy Act of 1974 [...]
Last week we provide a number of updates from the Nebraska Service Center. This week we provided some updates from the Texas Service Center (”TSC”). The TSC updates come from the senior management and are as of May 19, 2009. Processing Numbers. TSC has shown improvement in the processing numbers. Previously, TSC was processing between 3,000-4,000 [...]
Effective May 28, 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (”DHS”) began collecting biometric digital fingerprints from non-U.S. citizens departing the U.S. We wrote last April about the possibility of exit fingerprinting and it seems that DHS is underway to test the system and to implement it throughout other points of departure from the U.S. within [...]
A memorandum dated May 20, 2009 by Barbara Velarade provides some guidance to the USCIS Service Centers with respect to the standards for adjudicating H-1B petitions filed on behalf of beneficiaries seeking employment in a health care specialty occupation. Generally, the Velarde memorandum provides two kinds of guidance, one for beneficiaries with a license and one [...]
USCIS released updated information on the numbers of cap-subject H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of Tuesday, May 26, USCIS has received approximately 45,700 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap. USCIS will continue to accept petitions subject to the general cap. Additionally, USCIS has received approximately 20,000 petitions for aliens with advanced degrees; however, [...]
We have received some general updates from the Nebraska Service Center (NSC) and we would like to share them with you as they provide some useful insight into NSC’s operations: Backlog. The net overall backlog at the end of first quarter of FY2009 was 250,000 cases; reduced to 87,500 cases by the end of the 2nd [...]
We have been receiving a number of inquiries from prospective clients who are interested in switching to F-1 student visa status using a Form I-20 issued by a English as Second Language (”ESL”) school or a community college. In our experience, USCIS (if the change of status is requested from within the U.S.) or the [...]