The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implemented an increase in application fees charged by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) for both students and schools. The changed fees relate to the payments students must submit with the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System...
On July 10, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019. If passed into law, the bill would eliminate the per-country cap on employment-based green cards, and increase the per-country limit for family-based categories. While this news...
The August 2019 Visa Bulletin has been released by the U.S. Department of State (DOS). There are some notable retrogressions in employment-based (EB) categories, with EB3 India moving to January 1, 2006 and EB2 and EB3 all other countries retrogressing to January 1, 2017 and...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced an upgrade to its online tool, the Freedom of Information Act Immigration Records System (FIRST). FIRST now allows stakeholders to make Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests online for certain documents. Background FOIA, which went into effect in...
Processing times at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have long been a point of concern. And the Trump Administration's efforts to implement roadblocks in the legal immigration system have only exacerbated the situation. Since the last fiscal year of the Obama Administration, the...
On June 17, 2019, President Trump took to Twitter to announce upcoming efforts to detain and deport "millions" of undocumented immigrants. Senior administrators confirmed his claims, adding that final orders of removal have already been issued to more than one million undocumented immigrants. On June...
On June 10, 2019, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan announced that Ken Cuccinelli would be assuming the role of Acting Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). There is no consensus as to whether President Trump will confirm...
The USCIS has updated the Adjustment of Status Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin webpage to clarify that the family-based, second preference "A" (FB2A) category is "current" under the July 2019 Visa Bulletin.The July 2019 Visa Bulletin contains an extremely unusual entry in the FB2A...
On July 2, 2019, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman is putting on a teleconference related to H1B enforcement issues. The following topics will be covered during the teleconference:Compliance and systematic review of H1B petitions...
Most months, Charles Oppenheim, the U.S. Department of State (DOS) Chief of the Visa Control and Reporting Division, provides visa bulletin explanations and predictions. Following the release of the July 2019 Visa Bulletin, Mr. Oppenheim explained the reasoning for making the family-based, second preference A...
