After the significant forward movement in many of the family-based preference categories in the fall, the government has received a significant number of I-130 family-based immigrant petitions in a number of preference categories. In an effort to process these pending I-130 petition in a more efficient manner, in November 2010, USCIS transferred approximately 36,000 I-130 [...]
On November 23, 2010, the pre-announced increase in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service ("USCIS") filing fees went into effect. All applications and petitions filed must now include the new and correct filing fee, or the filings will be rejected. We have written in the past about the need of this fee increase and our [...]
USCIS has announced that, in conjunction with FBI, it has met its goal of eliminating the FBI National Name Check Program backlog. The goal was to achieve a performance (which can actually be sustained going forward) of completing 98 percent of name checks requests submitted by USCIS within 30 days and the remaining 2 percent within [...]