News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - January 29, 2010 Congress has established an annual H-1B cap of 65,000. Of that number, 6,800 are set aside for the H-1B1 program under terms of the U.S.-Chile and U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreements. The total H-1B cap...

News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - January 13, 2010 On January 8, 2010, USCIS’s Associate Director, Service Center Operations, Donald Neufeld, issued a memo making additions to the Adjudicator’s Field Manual (AFM), the manual used by USCIS officers in...

News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - December 22, 2009 On Tuesday, December 22, 2009, USCIS announced that the H-1B cap was reached.  All cap-subject H-1B petitions received at USCIS before Monday, December 21st “made the cap.”  Cap-subject H-1B petitions...

News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - December 17, 2009 As of Tuesday, December 15, 2009, approximately 84,200 H-1B cap-subject petitions had been received and counted towards the H-1B cap.  This means that only 100 H-1Bs were still available as of...

News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - December 4, 2009 As of Friday, December 4, 2009, approximately 81,100 H-1B cap-subject petitions had been received and counted towards the H-1B cap.  This means that 3,200 H-1Bs are still available.  If the recent rate...

News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - November 30, 2009 As of Friday, November 27, 2009, approximately 78,900 H-1B cap-subject petitions had been received and counted towards the H-1B cap.  When this number is added to the statutory “H-1B1” set-asides of...

Background:  The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS), a unit created in 2004 to combat immigration benefit fraud, recently commenced an assessment of the H-1B program. FDNS previously conducted assessments in the L-1, EB-1-3 Multi-National Manager and Executive, and R-1 visa programs. Now, it is turning its attention to H-1Bs.  The following is information that employers should know about FDNS and FDNS’ current H-1B assessment program.

News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - September 24, 2009 In 2008, the annual allotment of cap-subject H-1Bs was so oversubscribed within the first few days of the filing season opening on April 1, 2008 that USCIS closed the filing period on April 7th and...

News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - February 19, 2009 The U.S. Department of Labor’s electronic portal for filing Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) in support of H-1B petitions now contains a warning to employers that have received TARP funding regarding...