Some more news to report from our local community. Three teenagers who were detained by immigration officials at a trolley station and sent to Mexico last month have been allowed to return to the United States on what is known as humanitarian parole. The students, ages 15, 16 and 17,…
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said there are not enough votes for the Obama administration to achieve its desired immigration reform, and change in the system as we know it today. The plan was derailed when conservative activists, who claimed the program would have constituted “amnesty” for illegal immigrants,…
The U.S. Dept. of State has estimated that all 140,000 employment-based immigrant visa numbers will be used this fiscal year (October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009). This is a statistical projection based upon the utilization of Green Cards so far. Because of greater usage in EB-4 and EB-5, the…
USCIS kept on updating the total number of cases received for H-1B for FY 2009-10. However, the recent USCIS H-1B cap count indicates decline in number of cases than what had been previously reported. The updated count reports the receipt of 44,400 ‘Regular’ cap cases, by June 12, 2009 which…
In a recent decision, RUIZ-DIAZ v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, the court ruled that Petitioners who filed or will file a Petition for Special Immigrant Religious Worker Visa (Form I-360) with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) on behalf of individual beneficiaries are hereby notified that you or your…
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…