Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) accused the White House on Saturday of playing politics with immigration reform, after President Obama delayed meeting with congressional leaders to discuss the topic this upcoming week. The longtime anti-illegal-immigration lawmaker questioned the administration’s motives in setting up a bipartisan meeting with members of Congress on…
Last week I attended the Annual Immigration Lawyers conference in Las Vegas. During the conference, government officials spent some time to update the attendees of the most recent information and upcoming changes. It seems that the collection of the $500 fraud fee for new H1B or L-1 petitions is being…
Mr. Charles Oppenheim of the Department of State Visa Office has advised AILA of the following predictions for the movement of priority dates for the remainder of FY2009 and future years. He estimates that all 140,000 employment-based immigrant visa numbers will be used this fiscal year (October 1, 2008 through…
The July 2009 Visa Bulletin was released. As we anticipated, the only change is the EB-2 China category which changed and retrogressed 5 years. All other categories remain unchanged. Here is a summary of the July 2009 Visa Bulletin: * EB-1 remains current across the board. * EB-2 remains unchanged…
The Department of Labor published a final rule, effective on June 29, 2009, that suspends the H-2A final rule published on December 18, 2009. DOL is republishing and reinstating regulations in place on January 16, 2009, for 9 months, after which the Department will either have engaged in further rulemaking…
I’m at the annual meeting of the American Immigration Lawyers Association here in Las Vegas. More than 10, 000 lawyers gathered here in Las Vegas to learn about the most recent updates from the Government directly. We just finished a session with the Department of Labor. Some of the key…
A few days ago, Attorney General Eric Holder, vacated the decision in Matter of Compean and directed the BIA and Immigration Judges to apply the decision in Matter of Lozada for claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, pending promulgation of relevant regulations. Attorney General Eric Holder withdrew the decision issued…
As of May 29, 2009, approximately 45,800 H-1B cap-subject petitions and approximately 20,000 petitions qualifying for the advanced degree cap exemption had been filed. USCIS will continue to accept both cap-subject petitions and advanced degree petitions until a sufficient number of H-1B petitions have been received to reach the statutory…
USCIS is announcing that applicants may experience up to an eight week delay in the delivery of their permanent resident card while we are in the process of upgrading our card production equipment. USCIS Field Offices will be issuing temporary evidence of permanent residence in the form of an I-551…
I am not very proud to announce this but, ICE stated a few days ago that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department is the first law enforcement body to implement the Secure Communities program, under which every individual booked into the three largest jails in San Diego County will have…