On September 24, 2020, the Department of State issued its first Visa Bulletin of the new Fiscal Year for October 2020. USCIS then announced that it is accepting the Dates for Filing Chart for October filings. EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 “All Other” are all current for...
09/29/2020 update:On September 29, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted the motion for a preliminary injunction (“PI”) filed by eight nonprofit organizations in the ongoing Fee Rule litigation. The PI has a nationwide effect...
November 5, 2020 update:On Wednesday, November 4, 2020, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal stayed the lower court’s order. Therefore Public Charge is back in effect for now. November 3, 2020 update:On Monday, November 2, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern...
On May 29, 2020, USCIS announced that it would resume its Premium Processing Service (“PPS”) in these stages throughout the month of June:
June 1, 2020: all eligible I-140 petitions
June 8, 2020: I-129 petitions that were filed/receipted before June 8, excluding H-1B “cap” cases (i.e., PPS “upgrades” will be available for non-H “cap” cases filed/receipted before June 8)
June 15, 2020: concurrent filings for H-1B cap-exempt filings
June 22, 2020: H-1B “cap” filings and cases filed/receipted after June 8
These dates are subject to change.
Updated March 23, 2020:On March 20, 2020, USCIS announced that Premium Processing Service is temporarily suspended for all I-129 and I-140 petitions, not just for H-1B cap cases. Cases that were already filed and accepted with Premium Processing Service will be...
As previously posted, on Monday, January 27, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the administration’s request for a stay of the nationwide injunction against the administration’s public charge rule, which cleared a path for the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) to implement the public charge rule within the United States starting on February 24, 2020.
The new rule drastically changes the standard by which a foreign national is determined to be “likely at any time to become a public charge” (and consequently inadmissible to the U.S.), and affects not only family-based but also employment-based filings.
Update:
USCIS announced on January 31, 2020 that it will implement the rule changes for filings received on or after February 24, 2020. New forms are to be released the week of February 3, 2020.
Original post:
As discussed in a prior post, the administration’s “public charge” rule changes the standard by which a foreign national is determined to be “likely at any time to become a public charge” (and consequently inadmissible to the U.S.). While litigation has delayed the implementation of the rule, on Monday, January 27, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the administration’s request for a stay of the nationwide injunction against the rule, which clears a path for the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) to implement the public charge rule within the United States, except for Illinois, which has a statewide injunction that remains in place.
As discussed in our previous blog posts, USCIS is taking steps to implement an electronic registration to be used in the upcoming H-1B cap lottery for Fiscal Year 2021. A few further implementation details have now been released in a Federal Register posting dated January 9, 2020, and in a press release dated January 10, 2020. USCIS noted the following details:
The initial registration period will open from March 1 through March 20, 2020.
H-1B cap-subject petitioners, including those seeking Master’s cap H-1Bs, will be required to first register electronically with USCIS and pay the associated $10 H-1B registration fee for each submission.
This is a brief update on L-1 “intracompany transferee” visa processes for Canadian citizens, because those processes began changing in April 2018. As background, the L-1 intracompany transferee visa, in most cases, requires that the employer first file and obtain USCIS approval of an L-1 petition, and that the prospective L-1 employee (the beneficiary) then apply in person to a U.S. Consulate in their home country for a physical L-1 visa. Canadian citizens are usually “visa-exempt,” meaning they are not required to get a physical visa from a U.S. Consulate. Moreover, for L-1 visas, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allows for eligible Canadian citizens to submit their U.S. employer’s L-1 petition directly at a “Class A” port of entry (POE) for on-the-spot adjudication by U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) at the same time the individual is asking CBP for admission to the U.S.
