Mr. Oppenheim is the Chief of the Visa Control and Reporting Division at the U.S. Department of State. For many, he is simply known as the person responsible for the monthly and annual visa number allocations for family- and employment-based green cards. He is also the person who prepares and publishes the monthly visa bulletin [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the January 2011 Visa Bulletin which is the fourth Visa Bulletin for the FY2011 fiscal year and first for the calendar year. The major headline in the upcoming month's bulletin is the major retrogression in family-based visa numbers, accompanied by the continued slow forward movement across the employment-based categories. [...]
The U.S. State Department just released the December 2010 Visa Bulletin which is the third Visa Bulletin for the FY2011 fiscal year. As anticipated and as we wrote recently, following our meeting with Charles Oppenheim, there is not much movement across the employment-based categories. EB India, for example, does not see any movement this month. [...]
The May 2010 Visa Bulletin was just released by the State Department. The eighth visa bulletin for the fiscal year 2010 brings gradual forward across most employment-based categories except EB-2 India (no change this month, for the second month in a row). A notable movement can be seen in the EB-3 India category where the [...]
The April 2010 Visa Bulletin was just released by the State Department. The seventh visa bulletin for the fiscal year 2010 brings gradual forward movement. There is some gradual forward movement across most employment-based categories except EB-2 India and EB-3 Mexico which did not change this month. A notable movement is in EB-3 India category [...]
Today's Wall Street Journal has a recap of recent high-level meetings and plans regarding an immigration reform, a topic which President Obama said he will tackle during his first year in office. Washington has been busy for the past few months with health care, wars and the economic crisis. Not surprisingly, immigration reform has not [...]
The January 2010 Visa Bulletin was just released by the State Department. The fourth visa bulletin for the fiscal year 2010 and the first for the calendar 2010 does not bring much movement. For many categories, the only forward movement is in the 1-2 months range. Here is a summary of the January 2010 Visa [...]
Our firm handles a fair amount of appeals with the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) and we often receive inquiries not only about about the procedural aspects of an AAO appeal but also about the current processing times for AAO cases. About the AAO The AAO is an appeals office which handles appeals of certain decisions made by [...]
The Department of Labor has provided an update on the current PERM processing dates as of July 31, 2009. They are as follows: Regular processing: November 2008. Unfortunately, there is no movement in comparison to the April 30, 2009 report which also reported November 2008, resulting a net additional delay of three (3) months for regular [...]
The October 2009 Visa Bulletin which is the first visa bulletin for the new FY2010 fiscal year was released earlier today by the State Department. This October 2009 Visa Bulletin has been widely expected not only to see the EB-3 category go back to some availability of visas but also to use the movement in [...]