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Latest U.S. Immigration News
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June 2008 VB is out !!! |
| 310 views |
Immigrant Visas
Cut-Off Dates for Immigrant Visas We are pleased to announce the June 2008 cut-off dates for immigrant visas for individuals born in India and those born in most other countries. |
| 844 views |
This is the notification where FBI and USCIS have published 'target dates' to clear the name check backlog. |
| 961 views |
Looks like every other country in all category is jumping higher than India EB3. Unfortunate ones waiting for long time with PD earlier than Jun2003 (This is what it showed before July 07 fiasco!!!!) |
| 100 views |
"Under the new rule, certain students will be eligible to receive a 17-month extension of post-completion OPT"
A student must have received a degree included in the STEM Designated Degree Program List: Computer Science Applications, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Actuarial Science, Mathematics and Statistics, Engineering, Military Technologies, Engineering Technologies, Physical Sciences, Science Technologies, Medical Scientist |
| 1696 views |
Good for all EB2 |
| 398 views |
Guys, it seems the the USCIS just wants to keep skimming us. A new hurdle, a new fee. Just before we start getting ready for summer vacation.
May this nightmare be through soon. |
| 792 views |
Finally great news for those stuck in FBI Name Check. |
| 1429 views |
Good Luck with EB3 ROW |
| 1577 views |
FREE AT LAST |
| 1788 views |
... |
| 1202 views |
Not good at all |
| 715 views |
Visa bulletin |
| 776 views |
Finally, December 14 processing times have been posted. |
| 1137 views |
Useful article if you're in the I-140/I-485 stage, and are esp. thinking of using AC21. |
| 907 views |
OK guys, here is the December bulletin. A very little and discouraging change, but that's what we all expected anyway. So keep waiting and praying for a real and encouraging update of the priority dates in the bulletins to come. |
| 700 views |
Mildly good news:
For certain “H” and “L” nonimmigrants who have applied for adjustment of status to become permanent residents, the rule removes the requirement that such persons present a receipt notice (Form I-797, Notice of Action) for their adjustment applications when returning to the United States from travel abroad. |
| 1283 views |
USCIS answers several questions from AILA during the meeting on September 25, 2007. It highlights that there were 320,000 AOS applications received during the months of July and August on top of the existing pending AOS applications. |
| 496 views |
The following are questions and answers discussed during this teleconference. We will post answers received from USCIS as soon as we have them. We also plan to post any additional questions received by email. At the beginning of the call, USCIS Division Chief for Information and Customer Service provided the latest information on the frontlog and answered a few questions submitted to the Ombudsman prior to the call.
Q&As Discussed by CIS Ombudsman Based on Emails Received...read more at link COMMENT At least someone on the inside is willing to answer some of the questions that we ask each other daily on trackitt. |
| 853 views |
Worried about what happened to your application that you filed, along with thousands of others, between July 17, 2007 and August 17, 2007? Fear not: USCIS has posted some answers to your concerns on their web site, warning you that due to increased volume, receipts are delayed ( what a shocker!). Here’s the latest question and answer session. |
| 1032 views |
There has been no forward movement of the Employment cut-off dates for November. State Department explains that the reason for this is that it is still too early to see what impact the movement of the cut-off dates toward the end of FY-2007 may have on demand. Depending on the rate of demand being received from Citizenship and Immigration Services offices for adjustment of status cases, some forward movement of dates may be possible for December. |
| 197 views |
The Office of the CIS Ombudsman is hosting teleconferences to discuss your interactions with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Join us to share your comments, thoughts, and suggestions as well as any issues of concern. Questions & Answers from the April 11, 2007 teleconference are available.
Next Teleconference: Friday, October 12 - USCIS Receipting Delay - How Does This Affect You? 2:30-3:30 p.m. EDT How to Participate To participate in these calls, please RSVP to cisombudsman.publicaffairs@dhs.gov specifying which call you would like to join. Participants will receive a return email with the call-in information. If you are unable to participate in these calls, please visit our website at www.dhs.gov/cisombudsman for upcoming teleconference dates. Also, if you have a topic of interest for a future call, please send it to cisombudsman.publicaffairs@dhs.gov. We appreciate your participation in this pilot program. |
| 888 views |
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| 896 views |
USCIS has limited capability to produce reports detailing the status of long-pending FBI name check cases. In addition, USCIS systems do not automatically indicate when a delayed name check is complete and the case can be adjudicated. Often, this leads to a situation where the validity of other checks expire before USCIS reviews the case. Those checks then need to be reinitiated, adding financial and time costs for applicants and USCIS. |
| 1148 views |
Check it out.. |
| 1237 views |
Immigration authorities have received about 300,000 applications for high-skilled-employment visas since July 1, federal officials said yesterday, a deluge unleashed after the federal government first said it would not accept any applications for those visas during July and then reversed course.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency, was still receiving applications for employment visas yesterday, the last day of a special period it announced on July 17 for immigrants with professional skills to file petitions for permanent residence visas, known as green cards. As a result, the total tally of applications received in the last six weeks was not available. more... |
| 916 views |
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| 227 views |
Improving Existing Immigration
22. The Administration Will Reform And Expedite Background Checks For Immigration. Current mechanisms for conducting immigration background checks are backed up, slowing processing times and endangering national security. The Administration is investing substantial new funds to address the backlog, and the FBI and USCIS are working together on a variety of projects designed to streamline existing processes so as to reduce waiting times without sacrificing security. Who knows how long will it take to build an efficient system but atleast it gives some hope. |
| 389 views |
Q33: When filing an EB I-485 using the old fee, what version of the I-485 form do we use?
A33: The current I-485 form version dated “7/30/07 Y” should be used. The form can be found at www.uscis.gov Q34: To ensure that the correct fee is submitted, may an applicant submit both a check for the old fee and a second check for the new fee? A34: USCIS requires that all applications and petitions be submitted with the required filing fee or a waiver, if applicable. USCIS urges the public to exercise caution in submitting additional checks in incorrect amounts: extraneous checks may slow down the intake process and may result in an erroneous rejection of an application (as in the case where the check in the correct amount is missed) or in the inadvertent cashing of such checks, since filing fees are normally non-refundable. For additional information, the public is referred to the fee requirements announced in the Federal Register on August 1, 2007 (Temporary Adjustment of the Immigration and Naturalization Benefit Application and Petition Fee Schedule for Certain Adjustment of Status, FR at 41888)............ and more.. |
| 881 views |
We have just confirmed with the U.S. Department of State (DOS) Visa Office that the DOS Visa Bulletin for October 2007 will likely be similar to the DOS Visa Bulletin for January 2007. The January Visa Bulletin, http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin_3100.html, was current for EB1, and EB2 for countries of chargeability other than India and China. The EB2 cut off for China was April 22, 2005; India was January 8, 2003. EB3 cases were all retrogressed, with cut off dates ranging from May 8, 2001 to August 1, 2002. |
| 371 views |
Q21: Will USCIS permit applicants who filed adjustment applications between July 2, 2007 – July 17, 2007, but who have not yet received a USCIS generated receipt notice, to file for Advance Parole and Employment Authorization based on proof of delivery of the I-485 application?
A21. Yes. Q22: What will be the receipt date for employment-based adjustment applications filed between July 2, 2007 – July 17, 2007? A22: In accordance with standard procedure, USCIS will generate receipt notices for all properly filed employment-based adjustment applications based on the date the applications were physically received by USCIS. and more.. |
| 499 views |
Employment-Based Adjustment Applications Filed by Aliens Whose Priority
Dates are Current under Department of State July Visa Bulletin No. 107 Q1: Will USCIS reject a concurrently filed EB I-140/I-485 case if it is lacking a required Labor Certification? A1. USCIS will not accept an I-140 based on a required labor certification application if the approved labor certification application is not submitted in connection with the filing. USCIS will not accept a concurrently filed Form I-485 if the required Form I-140 is rejected for lack of an approved labor certification application. |
| 917 views |
Congressional leaders have begun to discuss legislation that would sharply increase the number of high-skilled foreign workers who could become permanent U. S. residents in the next few years. While it's sure to be controversial, the measure, if it passes, could mean more than 100,000 additional green cards would become available for skilled workers, perhaps even doubling the 140,000 that are allotted each year. "There are some discussions going on informally," says Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who chairs the House subcommittee on immigration. |
| 442 views |
WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that, beginning immediately, it will accept employment-based applications to adjust status (Form I-485) filed by aliens whose priority dates are current under the July Visa Bulletin, No. 107. USCIS will accept applications filed not later than August 17, 2007.
On July 2, 2007, USCIS announced that it would not accept any additional employment-based applications to adjust status. USCIS made that announcement after receiving an update from the Department of State that it would not authorize any additional employment-based visa numbers for this fiscal year. After consulting with USCIS, the Department of State has advised that Bulletin #107 (dated June 12) should be relied upon as the current July Visa Bulletin for purposes of determining employment visa number availability, and that Visa Bulletin #108 (dated July 2) has been withdrawn. USCIS’s announcement today allows anyone who was eligible to apply under Visa Bulletin No. 107 a full month’s time to do so. Applications already properly filed with USCIS will also be accepted. The current fee schedule will apply to all applications filed under Visa Bulletin No. 107 through August 17, 2007. |
| 338 views |
Looks like USCIS is going to grant a 31 day period to file adjustment cases to settle the Visa Bulletin mess. Apparently, one of the issues in contention was the period of time that would be granted for filing. |
| 527 views |
Many of you are waiting on pins and needles wondering what the news will be on the handling of green card petitions that were to be filed pursuant to the July Visa Bulletin. There is no change that a solution has apparently been reached, but the deal must still be cleared by the White House and that's what apparently is causing the hold up in the news being released. Will report as I learn more.... |
| 372 views |
Looking to resolve a messy immigration tangle, the U.S. government is close to announcing that it will accept at least some applications for work-based green cards that were filed by thousands of skilled workers in early July at the government's invitation and then abruptly rejected.
Tens of thousands of skilled workers, many of them in the U.S. on temporary H1B visas, responded to an official invitation, in a June 12 "visa bulletin" issued by the State Department, to take the final step in July toward attaining U.S. permanent residency. That sent workers, their families and their employers scrambling to ... |
| 395 views |
As everyone who follows employment-based immigration issues knows by now, July 2, 2007 brought about an unprecedented catastrophe in the immigration world. The July 2007 Visa Bulletin, posted by the U.S. Department of State (DOS) in mid-June 2007, announced the good news that all employment-based categories would be current. But, just as filings were set to begin, the DOS shut the door and revised the Visa Bulletin so that no one could file. This was the result of the USCIS's claims to have used all the previously-available 60,000 visa numbers remaining for the 2007 fiscal year. |
| 320 views |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Disgruntled green card applicants from India sent hundreds of flowers to the U.S. immigration agency on Tuesday to protest a recent policy flip-flop that hurt their quest for permanent residency.
The campaign that directed around a thousand flower deliveries to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Emilio Gonzalez was modeled on a popular Indian film promoting the peaceful protest methods of Mahatma Gandhi. |
| 218 views |
- A study of some 2,000 engineering and technology companies created between 1995 and 2005 found that in 25% of these companies, either the chief executive or lead technologist was foreign-born. In 2005, these 2,000 companies alone produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers.
- That is why getting immigration reform right is essential to keeping U.S economy growing. Today, nearly 60% of Ph.D.s and 40% of master's degrees in engineering from U.S. universities are awarded to foreign nationals. |
| 556 views |
WASHINGTON – In an effort to give our customers accurate information about current receipting times and service level commitments, United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) is providing the following projections concerning fee receipting and data entry processing of cases currently at USCIS Service Centers as well as the anticipated in time-compliance dates at each site. |
| 270 views |
The American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) has stated that it has been authorized to file the class action lawsuit to respond to the USCIS refusal to accept employment based I-485 applications starting from July 2, 2007. The Murthy Law Firm cannot participate in filing the lawsuit since we only practice U.S. immigration law and we are not litigation specialists. AILF will likely work with a litigation law firm that will file the lawsuit with AILF attorneys leading the project. |
| 210 views |
Frequently Asked Questions about Participating in this Lawsuit
AILF is considering filing a lawsuit in federal district court against the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) over its rejection of otherwise properly filed adjustment of status applications for the alleged reason that a visa was not available, even though the Visa Bulletin from the Department of State (DOS) states that a visa was available at the time of filing. |
| 519 views |
Immigration lawyers raised unusually irate protests yesterday after the State Department and the immigration service abruptly withdrew tens of thousands of job-based visas they had offered last month to foreign professionals hoping to become permanent residents in the United States. |
| 340 views |
Effective Monday July 2, 2007 there will be no further authorizations in response to requests for Employment-based preference cases. All numbers available to these categories under the FY-2007 annual numerical limitation have been made available. |
| 350 views |
WASHINGTON "Effective July 2, 2007, USCIS is announcing the temporary suspension of Premium Processing Service for Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker, in accordance with 8 CFR 103.2(f)(2). USCIS anticipates a substantial increase in the number of petitioning employers that will file Form I-140 petitions requesting Premium Processing Service as of July 2, 2007. This is due to pent up demand for preference visa categories for which visas will become available according to the Department of State July 2007 Visa Bulletin. The volume of Form I-140 petitions filed that request Premium Process Service is expected to exceed USCIS capacity to provide the Premium Process Service according to the Premium Process Service program guidelines. |
| 453 views |
U.S. consulates abroad have been known to deny visas based upon Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) Section 221(g) even after the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has approved a petition for the visa application. Some nonimmigrant categories require USCIS approval of a petition before one may apply for a visa at the consulate. |
| 553 views |
Jin Ju Yoo, a stay-at-home mother who immigrated from South Korea in 1990 and applied for U.S. citizenship in 2002, would seem a minimal security risk. So say friends in Clarksburg, Md., where Yoo, 36, plays drums at a Presbyterian church and raises three children with her husband, a flooring contractor. Her husband and children are citizens.
The would-be American is still waiting for approval, however, because the FBI has not completed a security check of her name against its more than 86 million investigative files. Neither the bureau nor the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency will say why. |
| 231 views |
A question that often arises among MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers involves a person in H1B status who wishes to change to a field of employment that is different from the field of his or her current H1B job. Such an individual often thinks that there has to be a similarity between the current H1B job and the prospective H1B position. To clarify for our readers; this is not true. There is no limitation on a change in fields in an H1B. One is in no way "locked in" to the type of job held in the current H1B as long as s/he he has the degree required for the new job or position. |
| 214 views |
In his testimony, Laszlo said that, due to limits on the number of H-1B visas, Google is regularly unable to pursue highly qualified candidates... Over the last year alone, the artificially low cap on H-1B visas has prevented more than 70 Google candidates from receiving H-1B visas... He also urged Congress to address the backlog of employment-based green cards for highly skilled workers. |
| 611 views |
The USCIS states that it expects the revenue generated to lead to a 20 percent reduction in processing times by the end of fiscal year 2009. They expect to cut processing times by the end of fiscal year 2008 on the four most common applications: I-90 (Application to Renew / Replace Green Card); I-140 (Immigrant Petition for Worker); I-485 (Application for Adjustment of Status) and N-400 (Application for Naturalization). |
| 206 views |
IMMIGRATION VOICE ALERT: 5/23/2007.
The US senate has taken up the immigration bill S 1348. The bill reduces the number of green cards for EB1, EB2 and EB3 categories from 140,000 to 90,000 for the first 5 years and introduces a new points based merit system. Phone Campaign: Call 2 senators from your state. (www.senate.gov) Then, call these senators. Patrick J. Leahy - 202-224-4242 Arlen Specter - 202-224-4254 Chuck Hagel - 202-224-4224 Joseph Lieberman - 202-224-4041 John Cornyn - 202-224-2934 Harry Reid - 202-224-3542 Mitch McConnell - 202-224-2541 Mel Martinez - 202-224-3041 Trent Lott - 202-224-6253 Lindsey Graham - 202-224-5972 Message: My name is ____ and I am calling from [city], [State]. I am a member of Immigration Voice – a group that represents legal skilled immigrants. We oppose the senate's immigration bill in its current form. The bill reduces the number of green cards for legal skilled immigrants and diverts those green cards to future guest workers program and to untested merits based system. We urge the Senator to amend the section 501(b) and increase the number of green cards for legal skilled immigrants from 140,000 to a higher number to eliminate the current backlogs the same way the bill reduces backlogs for family-based immigrants in section 501(a). www.immigrationvoice.org |
| 294 views |
New provisions could be drafted as early as next week following an agreement between a bi-partisan group of senators and the White House. |
| 304 views |
(Update: On Tuesday, May 16, the Senate passed Sen. Jeff Bingaman's (D-NM) amendment to S. 2611 that significantly reduced the number of legal immigrants who could enter under the bill's "guest worker" program. As a result of this change, our estimate of the number of legal immigrants who would enter the country or would gain legal status under S. 2611 falls from 103 million to around 66 million over the next 20 years.) |
| 263 views |
Debate centers on how much weight should be allocated to family ties, skills, languages.
A Canadian-style point system at the center of a controversial new immigration overhaul could transform the ethnic and social composition of the United States in decades to come, but such a change hinges on the details expected to emerge this week from intense closed-door negotiations between the White House and key senators in both parties. In concept, a point system that awards visas on the basis of such factors as education, age, job skills and English proficiency could mark a radical change from the current system that awards the vast majority of the 1 million legal permanent residence visas, or green cards, on the basis of a foreigner's family ties to relatives already in the United States. |
| 838 views |
Some big movements in priority dates.
Also check http://www.trackitt.com/usa-immigration-trackers/visa-bulletin1/ |
| 541 views |
India's fast growing economy and leaping information technology sector is attracting home more and more Indians from the Silicon Valley and the Indus Entrepreneur Group (TIE) estimates that around 60,000 may have returned in recent years, a media report said on Monday. |
| 276 views |
A number of inquiries have come to us regarding delays in PERM labor certification case adjudication. Beginning early in 2007, there has been a noticeable slowing in case processing at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Atlanta Processing Center. This center is one of two locations where PERM labor certifications are adjudicated. The other location is in Chicago. This slow-down is a marked change from the generally fast PERM labor certification decisions that had become the norm.
We at the Murthy Law Firm made inquiry about this matter, to gain some insight into why things had changed, and, of course, to determine how the situation might be improved. We were advised that personnel temporarily had been reallocated away from the PERM cases. The Atlanta Processing Center also processes temporary labor certifications needed in H2B cases. Due to demand and time constraints, personnel were diverted to work on the temporary labor certifications, which meant delays in the PERM labor certifications. Our sources indicate that the DOL adjudicators in Atlanta will be moved back to their regular responsibilities of processing PERM cases in the near future. Thus, PERM cases there should start moving again soon. |
| 801 views |
The length of time it takes for a name check to be completed varies from name to name. Normally, a name is submitted by an agency, such as the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), on a data tape. The National Name Check Program (NNCP) receives over 62,000 name checks every week, with over 27,000 coming from USCIS on a weekly basis. |
| 442 views |
Submitted by robin on 01 May 2007 (  |