Visa Lawyer Blog

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On Wednesday June 20, 2018, President Donald Trump signed executive order, “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation,” in response to mounting outrage over the administration’s controversial policy of separating immigrant parents from their children at the border.

The executive order clarifies that it will remain the policy of the United States to detain and remove aliens who have unlawfully entered or attempted to enter the United States outside of a designated port of entry, and that such individuals remain subject to a fine or imprisonment under U.S. law. The administration however promises to maintain family unity “by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.”

What the order does

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In this post we discuss the top five most common reasons your adjustment of status application may be denied.

Financial Reasons

One of the requirements to receive adjustment of status in the United States is to prove that the petitioner (the U.S. Citizen or LPR spouse) has sufficient income or assets to support you based on the petitioner’s household size when filing the I-864 Affidavit of Support. The petitioner must meet at least 125% of the U.S. poverty guidelines in order to sponsor the beneficiary of the adjustment of status application. If the petitioner does not meet that income requirement, they may be able to use assets such as properties, a 401(k), mutual investment fund, ownership of stocks, ownership of two or more automobiles to supplement their income. However, if the petitioner will be using the value of their assets to supplement their income, the total value of the assets must be equal to at least three times the difference between the total household income and 125% of the U.S. poverty guidelines for their household size. For an example of how to use assets to supplement income, please review the I-864 affidavit of support instructions.

If the petitioner does not meet the income requirement and cannot supplement the shortage with their assets, they must obtain a joint sponsor who does meet 125% of the U.S. poverty guidelines based on their income. A joint sponsor can be anyone that is a U.S. Citizen or LPR that satisfies the poverty guidelines.

One of the most common reasons for a denial of the adjustment of status application is that the petitioner and/or joint sponsor does not meet the required income requirement. Failure to respond to a request for evidence with satisfactory evidence will mean a denial of the application, even before the couple gets to the interview stage.

Public Charge

If USCIS believes that the beneficiary will likely become dependent on the U.S. government for long-term care or financial support, the green card application will be denied. USCIS reviews the I-864 affidavit of support and income documentation closely to determine whether the beneficiary is likely to become a public charge. Factors that may be considered to make this determination include the total income of the petitioner, the joint sponsor, assets, resources, and general financial status at the time of filing.

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In this post, we share with our readers the top five things you need to know before applying for the I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence.

  1. You must file the I-751 Removal of Conditions if you were granted Conditional Resident status (a 2-year green card) based on marriage to a U.S. Citizen or lawful permanent resident

A conditional permanent resident receives a green card that is valid for a 2-year period. Conditional permanent residence is given to foreign nationals who have been married for less than 2 years, on the day that the application for permanent residence was approved. Conditional permanent residents have “conditional” status instead of “permanent” resident status, because they must prove that they did not marry the US Citizen or LPR spouse solely to obtain an immigration benefit. These individuals must go through the additional hurdle of filing Form I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence to obtain a permanent resident card (10-year green card).

  1. You must file the I-751 petition in a timely manner

The I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence must be filed during the 90-day window immediately before the conditional residence will expire (see the conditional green card’s expiration date and subtract 90 days).

  1. Consequences of Failing to File

If you fail to remove your conditions before the 90-day window closes, you will automatically lose your permanent resident status on the second anniversary of the date you were granted conditional status. You are then subject to removal from the United States. You may only file an I-751 petition after the expiration date of your conditional residence if you demonstrate that your delay in filing the petition was due to extraordinary circumstances beyond your control

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Today, Monday June 11, 2018, in an unprecedented move, the Trump administration announced that it would be dropping asylum protection for survivors of domestic violence. The announcement was made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions this afternoon in the case Matter of A-B- 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), which explained that victims of domestic violence would no longer be eligible to receive asylum in the United States.

Matter of A-B- 27 effectively reverses a decision formerly made by the Department of Justice immigration appellate court which granted asylum to a woman from the country of El Salvador on the basis of allegations of rape and abuse by her husband.

In his decision, dated June 11, 2018, the Attorney General overruled a separate but similar decision in Matter of A-R-C-G-, stating that the case was “wrongly decided” by the appellate court and should not have become precedent. The Attorney General was able to make such a binding decision on immigration courts across the country because their authority derives directly from the Department of Justice, instead of the judiciary branch.

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In this post, we share with our readers the top five things you need to know before filing for citizenship.

  1. You must be a lawful permanent resident of the United States for a required period of time to apply for citizenship

In order to apply for citizenship, you must be a lawful permanent resident of the United States for a specified period of time. The period of time you must wait before filing for citizenship depends on how you acquired your permanent residence.

If you acquired your permanent residence based on marriage to a United States Citizen spouse, and you are still married to that individual, you may apply for citizenship once you have reached a 3-year period of continuous residence as a legal permanent resident.

If you are no longer married to the U.S. Citizen spouse through which you gained your permanent residence, or if you did not gain your permanent residence based on marriage, you may apply for citizenship once you have reached a required 5-year period of continuous residence as a legal permanent resident.

  1. You must demonstrate that you have been physically present in the United States and maintained continuous residence for a required period of time in order to file for citizenship

Physical Presence

In order to apply for citizenship, you must demonstrate that you have been physically present in the United States for at least 30 months in the 5 years preceding your citizenship application.

Continuous Residence

In addition, you must demonstrate that you have maintained continuous residence in the United States for a 3- or 5-year period depending on how you obtained your permanent residence. This means that you must not have taken any trips outside of the United States that lasted more than 6 months out of the year in the 5 years preceding your citizenship application. Trips outside of the United States include trips taken to Mexico.

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TPS Updates: Re-Registration Period is Now Open for Hondurans with TPS

Current beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under the Honduras country designation, who wish to maintain their TPS benefits, such as ability to continue working in the United States through the official termination date of the TPS program on January 5, 2020, must re-register for TPS benefits between June 5, 2018 and August 6, 2018.

Re-registration instructions are now available on the USCIS TPS website.

Re-registration Procedure:

Applicants must file Form I-821 Application for Temporary Protected Status as well as Form I-765 Application for Employment Authorization, preferably at the same time, but applicants may also file Form I-765 separately at a later date.

New EADs with a January 5, 2020 expiration date will be issued to Honduran TPS beneficiaries who apply within the re-registration period ending on August 6, 2018. USCIS will make every effort to issue new EADs before current EADs expire, however there are no guarantees given the amount of time required to process TPS re-registration applications.

USCIS has automatically extended the expiration date on EADs issued under the TPS designation of Honduras for 180 days, through January 1, 2019. This extension applies to individuals who have EADs that expired on January 5, 2018 and applied for a new EAD during the last re-registration period but have not yet received a new EAD.

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USCIS has announced that it will be processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests entirely online in the near future, as well as providing the results of those requests online.

Previously, USCIS allowed FOIA requests to be made only via mail, fax, and email and all results were provided on a compact disc by mail. USCIS will now be moving to a system of digital delivery that will take place through several stages.

Individuals who have an immigration court date pending will be able to file a FOIA request by creating an account on myUSCIS and receive the results of the request digitally. Requestors will be able to track the status of their FOIA request and receive notifications once USCIS has uploaded their records into the portal.

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In this post, we would like to keep our readers informed about Visa Bulletin projections for the month of May and June. Charles Oppenheim, Chief of the Visa Control and Reporting Division of the U.S. Department of State provides a monthly analysis of each month’s Visa Bulletin including discussion of current trends and future projections for immigrant preference categories.

Below are the highlights of those trends and projections:

Check-in with DOS’s Charlie Oppenheim: May 2018

Employment Based Categories

For the month of May, the following categories remained steady with no changes in the final action dates:

  • EB-1 China and India
  • EB-2 India
  • EB-3 China and Philippines
  • EB-4 El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and
  • EB-5 China

Categories that experienced some forward movement included:

  • EB-2 China to move forward one month to September 1, 2014
  • EB-3 India to advance three months to May 1, 2008
  • EB-3 Other Workers—China to move forward one month to May 1, 2007
  • EB-4 Other Workers—India to move forward about 3 months to May 1, 2008
  • EB-4 Mexico to advance 5 weeks to October 22, 2016

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On behalf of our Law Office, we would like to wish you a safe and Happy Memorial Day as you spend it with your loved ones. We would like to extend a thank you to our service men and women and their families this memorial day weekend. May God bless you and the United States of America.

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Today, May 25, 2018, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it will be publishing a proposed rule in the Federal Register on May 29th to end the International Entrepreneur Rule, a program that gives foreign entrepreneurs the opportunity to apply for parole to come to the United States for the purpose of developing or starting a business venture in the United States.

As you may be aware, during July of last year, DHS took its first steps to dismantle the program by delaying the implementation of the rule until March 14, 2018. During that time, DHS began to draft a proposal to rescind the rule. In December of 2017 however, a federal court ordered USCIS to begin accepting international entrepreneur parole applications, vacating the delay.

In an act of defiance, DHS is now seeking to eliminate the international entrepreneur rule altogether because the department believes that the rule sweeps to broadly and doesn’t provide sufficient protections for U.S. workers and investors. According to the agency, the international entrepreneur rule “is not an appropriate vehicle for attracting and retaining international entrepreneurs.” This is once again an effort by the Trump administration to undermine Obama era policies such as Deferred Action, to better align with the President’s America-first policies on immigration.

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