Earlier today, the Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), León Rodríguez, made a presentation during the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Fifth Annual Conference. During his speech, Mr. Rodríguez only spent a few minutes discussing issues related to the...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released guidance on how to pay the application for naturalization (N-400) filing fees by credit card. The N-400 is the only form that allows for fee payment by credit card. This change is part of President Obama's efforts...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that, effective October 19, 2015, there will be a change in the filing location for a limited group of form I-140 employer petitions. This change is simply an effort to balance workloads between the Texas Service Center...
A new self-check function has been added to the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification Entitlements (SAVE) program. The SAVE system is used by federal, state, and local agencies to check a person's immigration status when s/he is applying for a...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that "… petitions filed on or after October 1, 2015, should not include the additional fee that was previously required by … Public Law 111-230 … for certain H1B and L-1 petitions." This filing fee, which only...
Congress approved a spending bill late this afternoon that will fund the federal government's operations through December 11, 2015. This serves to avoid a government shutdown, at least for the next two months.The bill passed today was also used to extend the regional center (RC)...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) charges a fee to individuals who obtain immigrant visas at U.S. consulates abroad. This fee covers processing costs, including the cost to produce the individual's permanent residence card ("green card"). In response to requests from stakeholders, the USCIS has...
1. The visa numbers in the October 2015 Visa Bulletin allowing for I-485 filings suddenly changed on September 25, 2015. What happened?At this time, no one outside of the government knows for certain what happened. It appears that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)...
On August 17, 2015, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued final guidance on its updated L1B adjudications policy. This USCIS policy memorandum, which went into effect August 31st, is substantially similar to the draft guidance released on March 24, 2015. Change to L1B Trend? The...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced at the end of August 2015 that certain family-based immigration cases will be moved from the Vermont Service Center (VSC) to the California Service Center (CSC). Such internal case transfers are fairly routine, and typically are to balance...
