The Department of State has announced that as of August 26, 2011, the U.S. Consulate in Mumbai would resume processing of H and L visa stamp applications. The earliest appointments available were for September 6, 2011 and as of today, the Consulate is in normal processing mode. Earlier this year, in March, the Mumbai Consulate [...]
The Department of State will open the DV-2013 Diversity Visa (a.k.a. “green card”) lottery on Tuesday, October 4, 2011. The entries for this year’s lottery must be submitted electronically between noon, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) (GMT-4), Tuesday, October 4, 2011, and noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT-5), Saturday, November 5, 2011. Applicants may access [...]
In a September 2011 audit report on the use of Social Security Numbers (SSNs) by H-1B temporary workers, the Office of Inspector General (OIC) claims that a substantial percentage of H-1B cases may involve some amount of irregularity or fraud. OIG based its review on a random sample of 200 H-1B cases from the 38,546 [...]
The Department of State ("DOS"), in an "urgent" alert dated as of September 15, 2011, has advised that due to heavy demand in the employment-based immigrant visa categories, DOS has reached the Fiscal Year 2011 annual limit of employment-based green cards. DOS/USCIS to Stop Approving EB Immigrant Visas Until October 1 As a result of [...]
Our office handles a substantial number of ETA Form 9089 – Permanent Labor Certification (“PERM”) applications and we are closely monitoring the current PERM processing times not only for the benefit of our clients but also to be able to predict longer-term trends in PERM processing. The Department of Labor (“DOL”) has provided an update [...]
USCIS just released the information on the numbers of cap-subject FY2012 H-1Bs filed since April 1. As of September 9, 2011, USCIS has received approximately 32,200 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap (an increase of 3,200 over the previous two weeks). Similarly, as of September 9, there were 16,700 H-1B visas filed subject to [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the October 2011 Visa Bulletin which is the first Visa Bulletin for the FY2012 fiscal year. The major headline in the upcoming month’s bulletin is the significant forward movement in EB-2 India and China and the forward movement in FB1. Summary of the October 2011 Visa Bulletin – Employment-Based [...]
After a summer break, the immigration live chat returns next Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 9 pm eastern time. Please join us on Thursday to ask questions or discuss recent developments relating to immigration. Thursday's chat will be of general nature, meaning that we will be able to have a discussion on a number of [...]
Our practice handles a number of N-400, Application for Naturalization, cases for U.S. lawful permanent residents seeking to obtain U.S. citizenship. In addition to preparing and filing a complete Form N-400 application with USCIS and submitting to a biometrics appointment, the N-400 naturalization process includes a personal interview and a naturalization test. While the information [...]
As the new school year is underway at many colleges and universities across the U.S., it is interesting to share some statistics and profiles relating to the F-1 foreign student visa program. The data has been released from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) as of June 30, 2011. As of June 30, [...]