While the press and the public focuses on the titanic battle between Congress and the President as to his Executive power and directives that might impact the status of millions of undocumented aliens, the business community is parsing through the series of initiatives that the President has proposed to assist in legal immigration and unfortunately, … Continue Reading
The Department of State (DOS) Bureau of Consular Affairs nonimmigrant visa system suffered an outage last week. Working over the weekend, DOS has made progress restoring the database and is now able to print visas. As such, DOS has resumed visa processing, giving priority to processing of immigrant visa cases. However, foreign nationals awaiting nonimmigrant … Continue Reading
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced two major advancements today to help businesses attract and retain professionals working in the U.S. The first proposed rule change extends employment authorization to spouses of certain H-1B visa beneficiaries. The second change would include workers from Chile and Singapore (H-1B1) and Australia (E-3) in the list of … Continue Reading
The FY 2015 H-1B Cap has been reached. USCIS has announced it received approximately 172,500 petitions filed between April 1, 2014 and April 7, 2014 that were subject to the FY 2015 H-1B cap. It has conducted a lottery of all those petitions to select the 85,000 eligible under the general cap and U.S. advanced … Continue Reading
USCIS announced today that the FY 2015 H-1B cap has been reached. USCIS will be conducting a lottery of all those petitions properly filed between April 1, 2014 and April 7, 2014. This alert addresses this important development. Read the full text of this alert.… Continue Reading
While it may seem early, it is a good time for employers to start preparing for the H-1B Cap for Fiscal Year 2015, which begins October 1, 2014. Demand for the H-1B has steadily increased with last year’s cap being reached in the first week of filing. Employers should expect this trend to continue and … Continue Reading
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service plans to begin conducting unannounced, post-approval site visits of L-1 petitioners under its Administrative Site Visit and Verification Program (ASVVP) in the beginning of 2014. This new phase of site visits comes in response to a recent report released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office … Continue Reading
The unthinkable is happening, a U.S. government shutdown. Read this alert to learn about the impact of the shutdown on immigration matters. Read the full text of this alert.… Continue Reading
On Friday, August 2nd, the U.S. Department of State announced its implementation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Windsor decision, confirming that effective immediately “U.S. Embassies and Consulates will adjudicate visa applications that are based on a same-sex marriage in the same way that we adjudicate applications for opposite gender spouses.” This alert addresses this important … Continue Reading
On June 26, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as unconstitutional, allowing for the recognition of same-sex marriages and making way for same-sex married couples to receive benefits under federal law. This alert looks at the immigration law implications of … Continue Reading
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