The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced this morning that acceptance of premium processing requests for H1B extension of status petitions would resume, effective today, July 13, 2015. Any premium processing requests for H1B extensions received before July 13, 2015 will be rejected.The USICS...
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) released the August 2015 Visa Bulletin today. The employment-based, third preference (EB3) category for those born in India moves ahead faster than predicted, advancing by four months to a cutoff date of June 1, 2004. EB3 China, on the...
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has designated Nepal for temporary protected status (TPS) in the wake of devastating earthquakes that occurred in April and May 2015. Nationals of Nepal who "…have been both 'continuously physically present' and 'continuously residing' in the United States since...
The option for qualifying H-4 spouses to apply for employment authorization documents (EADs) began May 26, 2015. Although it was widely expected that it would take several months for the first approval notices to arrive, the Murthy Law Firm is happy to report that at...
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision on June 15, 2015, in Kerry v. Din, a case that involved the doctrine of consular nonreviewability. Consular nonreviewability protects the decisions of U.S. consular officers, including approvals and denials of visa applications, from review by U.S. courts....
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) announced that all visa-issuing embassies and consulates are fully functioning, as of June 26, 2015. This marks the end of a worldwide shutdown of visa issuance that began on June 9th. The DOS estimates that the accumulated backlog of visa...
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) provides a monthly explanation of visa bulletin developments, as well as predictions for future cutoff date movements. The predictions for July 2015, which follow the release of the visa bulletin, include various updates, including the disappointing news that there...
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) is making significant progress toward resolving the technical problems that were preventing visa issuance. As of this writing, 39 consular posts are reconnected to the biometric clearance system. The list of these consulates, which include Chennai, New Delhi and...
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to receive more requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) than any other government agency. In fact, during fiscal year 2014 (FY14), the DHS received a record number of requests - 291,242. The majority of FOIA...
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) reports that progress has been made toward restoring the visa issuance systems. DOS updates state that 22 consular posts have been reconnected to the biometric data processing system, and work continues to reconnect more consular posts.The most recent update...
