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...
Similar to the policy announced this past fall for O-1/O-2 consultations, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is now accepting negative P consultations directly from labor unions. The measure is presumably to prevent fraud in the P-1, P-2, and P-3 petition process. Background on P...
On Friday, April 5, 2019, the USCIS announced that it had received sufficient filings for regular H1B cap subject cases for fiscal year 2020 (which will begin October 1, 2019). In essence, the USCIS confirmed that they had received more filings than the 65,000 regular...
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 April 2019 Visa Bulletin, Mr. Oppenheim provides some updated information on what to expect in the...
