Beginning in May 2019, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will begin issuing form I-94 arrival/departure records with alphanumeric "numbers" (i.e., composed of letters and numbers). This change will have no impact on the validity of I-94 cards and numbers issued prior to the...
Effective May 1, 2019, citizens of Israel will be able to access the E-2 (treaty investor) visa category. The United States and Israel had signed a qualifying treaty in June 2012. However, the E-2 visa program for Israeli citizens could not become effective until Israel...
A recent report released by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts public policy research on trade, immigration, education, and other issues, provides further confirmation that the Trump Administration has radically changed how the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services...
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has reported on developing changes in adjudication policies related to L-1 petitions at several ports of entry (POEs) along the U.S. / Canada border. According to AILA, numerous practitioners have reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers...
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has issued a guidance memorandum on how electronic postings can be used to satisfy an H1B employer's posting requirements when submitting a labor condition application (LCA). General Posting Requirements Prior to filing an H1B petition, the employer first must obtain a...
Due to a system error, certain I-797B approval notices, recently issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Vermont Service Center (VSC), fail to list the name of the first beneficiary (alphabetically, by surname) in instances where there are multiple beneficiaries. In response to...
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) has released the May 2019 Visa Bulletin. While the cutoff date movement is fairly unremarkable, the latest visa bulletin also provides a disappointing prediction for India- and China-born beneficiaries in the employment-based, first preference (EB1) category. All cutoff dates...
On March 27, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York granted summary judgment to a Canadian physician who sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) refused him admission to the United States...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced this evening that it has completed the randomized H1B cap lottery selection process. The USCIS also confirmed that, as expected, it received more than 20,000 petitions that qualified for the advanced-degree exemption ("master's cap").The USCIS reported that...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it will be closing all international operations (IO) division offices by the end of 2019. The USCIS IO division is comprised of 24 field offices in 21 foreign countries. These offices have served as hubs...
