The September 2017 Visa Bulletin, which is the last visa bulletin of fiscal year 2017, was released by the U.S. Department of State (DOS) this morning. There was no movement in the dates for filing chart, and only a bit of progress in the final...
Today, President Trump announced his support for a bill proposed by Republican Senators Tom Cotton (AR) and David Perdue (GA) that, if passed, would make massive changes to the U.S. immigration system. The proposal would replace the current employment-based immigration system with a merit-based system....
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policy manual was updated on July 26, 2017, to now require that nearly all naturalization applicants provide biometrics, regardless of age. Prior to this, those applying to become U.S. citizens who were 75 years of age or older,...
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) delayed the effective start date of the parole program for entrepreneurs until March 14, 2018. The DHS apparently will use the additional time to evaluate whether the proposed entrepreneur program should be eliminated altogether, in light of President...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released a new version of the application to register permanent residence or adjust status (form I-485). Effective August 25, 2017, the USCIS will only accept the new version of the I-485, which lists an edition date of 06/25/2017...
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a smartphone app to assist those who are studying to take the civics portion of the naturalization test. The app, which is called USCIS: Civics Test Study Tools, is available for both Apple and Android devices. Background One...
As of Monday, July 24, 2017, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) resumed accepting requests for premium processing for certain cap-exempt H1B petitions. As explained in the USCIS news release:Premium processing will resume for petitions that may be exempt from the cap if the...
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has been advised by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that during April 2017, a number of PERM filings were inadvertently denied for failure to respond to audit requests, even though the employers had actually submitted timely responses via...
Charles Oppenheim, Chief of the Visa Control and Reporting Division for the U.S. Department of State (DOS), provides visa bulletin explanations and predictions nearly every month. The update this month for the August 2017 Visa Bulletin includes both some short-term predictions and some predictions for...
In a brief, unsigned Opinion today, the United States Supreme Court allowed a lower court’s restrictions on the Trump Administration’s travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries to remain in place. The Supreme Court had previously allowed parts of the travel ban to go into effect,...
