Photograph taken at Ellis Island Further changes have been made to the November Visa Bulletin published earlier this month by the Department of State. The dual chart system remains in place including the ‘final action date’ chart and ‘date of filing’ chart. So what has changed? USCIS has become more…
International students seeking a STEM Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension must be aware that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not yet published a replacement rule authorizing further STEM OPT extensions, this following a court decision prohibiting DHS from allowing 17 month extensions to be issued. The OPT program…
Yesterday, USCIS released a draft version of what will eventually be used as the policy manual guide of extreme hardship. The policy manual has been created for the purpose of assisting adjudicating officers in making final determinations on the merits of waivers of inadmissibility. Certain aliens, who are found to…
Last week, we reported to our readers that on September 25th the Department of State and USCIS re-issued the October Visa Bulletin and changed the date of filing chart drastically, rolling back the ‘Dates of Filing’ for heavily used visa categories, including employment based and family-sponsored petitions. The American Immigration…
Great news for regional center investors, medical doctors applying for a J-1 visa waiver under the Conrad 30 Waiver Program, and religious workers; a federal government shutdown has been avoided—at least until December 11, 2015. As reported in our previous blog earlier this week, Congress was faced with the challenge…
As some of you may have heard, on September 25th the US Department of State made some additional changes to the October 2015 Visa Bulletin. These changes include new and earlier date of filing cut-offs than those initially released on September 9th. The date of filing chart released on September…
On Monday the Senate will be voting on a short-term spending bill introduced by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran. If passed, the bill will temporarily fund the government through December 11th of this year. If the bill is not passed, the country will face a government shutdown beginning on…
It is our pleasure to introduce our readers to our senior case manager, Inese Grate, one of the original members of the Law Offices of Jacob J. Sapochnick. Ms. Grate joined our firm when there were merely 2 employees working at the office. In addition to studying law in Latvia,…
In a bulletin released on September 11th the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services explains conditions relating to prioritization of interview scheduling for affirmative asylum applications. According to CIS, affirmative asylum applications began to be prioritized as of December 26, 2014 which fall under the below mentioned categories. The categories…
On September 9th the Department of State and USCIS jointly announced new procedures that will allow family-based and employment-based applicants stuck in immigrant visa backlogs to apply for an immigrant visa (adjustment of status) before their priority date becomes current and an immigrant visa becomes immediately available to them. These…