On January 30, 2024, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a final rule in the Federal Register making significant fee increases for various immigration applications and benefit requests. This fee increase will be the first major adjustment in the filing fees since 2016. The increase is meant to address…
Newly released data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has shown that thanks to policy guidance released in January 2022, more foreign nationals working in the STEM fields are receiving O-1A visas than ever before. In just the first year of issuing its revised guidance for example, issuance…
As the new year approaches, we have some unfortunate news to report for certain employment-based applicants who may wish to file their petitions with premium processing service in 2024, including those filing: Form I-129 Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker Form I-140 Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker, as well as Certain…
In this blog post, we share with you an important update from the U.S. Embassy in Israel. If you have a pending nonimmigrant or immigrant visa application awaiting an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem or U.S. Embassy Branch Office in Tel Aviv, you should be aware that visa…
Certain types of nonimmigrants will be expected to shell out more money for the nonimmigrant visa process. The State Department has announced that starting June 17, 2023, nonimmigrant visa (NIV) application processing fees for visitor visas for business or tourism (B1/B2s and BCCs), and other non-petition based nonimmigrant visas such…
The Department of State raised eyebrows earlier this month when it released information that it will be reducing the waiting period for 221(G) “administrative processing,” in an effort to process visas more efficiently. While this is welcome news, in practice it may not mean much. Consulates and Embassies have been…
In this blog post, we give you an update on the status of the proposed rule increasing the filing fees for certain applications and petitions filed with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). As you may remember, on January 4, 2023, USCIS published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking…
Welcome back to Visalawyerblog! We hope you had a wonderful holiday break and wish you a prosperous new year ahead. We kick off the new year with some important updates in the world of immigration. Today, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officially announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that…
Welcome back to Visalawyerblog! We hope you had a wonderful Christmas break with your families. In this blog post, we share a new update from the State Department regarding the continuation of its interview waiver policy for certain nonimmigrant visa types. In a new announcement, the Secretary of State has…
Our readers will be happy to know that the Department of State has released a new update in the month of October on the status of worldwide consular visa operations. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a period of uncertainty and created tremendous backlogs at the Consular level. As most of you…