_Blog

On May 16, 2019, President Trump proposed a new immigration system in which over half of all green cards would be allotted to highly educated and skilled immigrants and their families. Under the President’s proposal, the number of green cards approved each year would remain at 1.1 million, the same as now. However, the percentage […]

Read More

Charlie Oppenheim of the U.S. Department of State has announced that the EB-3 category for Filipino nurses and other professionals will be become current in July 2019 and will stay current all summer long. Advice for Filipino Professionals Unless you are a registered nurse or a physical therapist, your employer will have to obtain the […]

Read More

On May 17, 2019, the U.S. State Department announced that the family 2A category (spouses and unmarried children of lawful permanent residents) will become current for the first time in many years. The State Department’s Charlie Oppenheim who is responsible for the monthly Visa Bulletin announced this momentous development at the Immigration Conference of the […]

Read More

On May 3, 2019, a Federal Judge issued an injunction preventing the USCIS from enforcing its August 2018 unlawful presence memo which attempted to change the rules retroactively for F and M students and J exchange visitors. The plaintiffs in Guilford College v. USCIS maintain that the government did not follow the proper administrative procedures in […]

Read More

In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark 8-1 decision in Pereira v Sessions holding that a Notice to Appear (NTA) in Immigration Court which does not state the date and time of the hearing is a defective Notice to Appear and does not give the Immigration Court jurisdiction over a case. The […]

Read More

 For employers who are subject to the H-1B numerical cap, the filing season ended on April 5, both lotteries are over and many receipt notices have been issued. What’s next will be a virtual tsunami of thousands of Requests for Evidence (RFEs), Notices of Intent to Deny (NOIDs) and H-1B Petition Denials. If we […]

Read More

The U.S. Department of State issues the Visa Bulletin on a monthly basis. The Visa Bulletin lets you estimate how long it will take for you to get a green card. Where there is no backlog, the State Department lists the category as “current”. This is true for most of the worldwide employment-based categories. You […]

Read More

It’s been a long time coming, but Israeli investors will finally be able to obtain E-2 Treaty Investor visas to start businesses in the U.S. starting on May 1, 2019. E-2 Investor Visas for Israelis The E-2 Investor Treaty between the U.S. and Israel was signed by President Obama back in 2012. However, for the […]

Read More

    The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019 (H.R. 1044) would eliminate per-country quotas for employment-based immigration and more than double per-country quotas for family-based immigration. While per-country quotas are unfair and counter-productive, if they were simply and swiftly eliminated without doing more, a new host of problems would arise.   Why Getting […]

Read More

On February 20, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) submitted a proposed H-4 EAD regulation entitled “Removing H-4 Dependent Spouses from the Class of Aliens Eligible for Employment Authorization” to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. DHS marked the proposed rule as “economically significant” which would allow the OMB to rap […]

Read More