On January 31, 2020 President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation expanding the Travel Ban enacted in 2018 to include certain foreign nationals of the following six countries: Burma (Myanmar), Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania. According to the Department of Homeland Security, these additions were based on an assessment from the Department of Homeland Security
Once again the EB-2 category has remained current despite the projections that there could be a backlog (although, as you will see below, we are not yet out of the woods on the EB-2 retrogression as of yet). Below are the movements in most Family and Employment categories as well as an update from Charlie
A big question that many people have, before even asking if they would qualify for a National Interest Waiver application, is can I even file one considering that I am a [fill in the blank with your profession]. You may be surprised that, for the most part, the answer is “Yes, people in that profession
Not everyone realizes but there are huge backlogs of cases for employment based immigrant visas. For about 1 year now the EB-1 category (Extra-ordinary Ability, Outstanding Professor and Researchers and Intra-Company Transferees) category has been backlogged about 1 year for most of the world and several years for China and about 4-5 years for India.
The Department of State released the January Bulletin as well as an update from Charlie Oppenheim as to usage patterns and what to expect in the future. The biggest surprise was that there was NO backlog for the EB-2 or EB-3 category as predicted. In fact, usage patterns slowed so much that Mr. Oppenheim now
We have received a good number of questions about the grace period afforded to H-1B visa holders recently, so I thought I would go through the grace period and what it covers. We discussed this previously in this blog post but this post will clarify and expand on exactly how the grace period works. Who is
For those who may have missed this in my last blog post (See here), there is a potential that the EB-2 category, which includes the National Interest Waiver may no longer be current for ANY country come January 2020. What does this mean? In order to file the I-485 application, there must be an immigrant visa
The December Visa Bulletin was released just a couple days ago. The most startling item in the bulletin was a note by Mr. Oppenheim stating that EB-2 and EB-3 may no longer be current come January or February of next year. This is a major change from previous years, as these categories either remained current,
USCIS just released a proposed rule that would increase most fees for USCIS benefits, some by quite a bit. I will go through some of the proposals below. I-485: Adjustment of Status Currently, there is a general fee for the I-485 that covers filing the I-485, and the filing of the I-765 and I-131 applications.
Before discussing the visa bulletin for November, I just wish to apologize for the absence of posts in the last couple of months. In the future I shall make sure that there are no more long pauses such as the one that occurred and will ensure that I am able to get out relevant information