October 2023 Final action dates across most employment-based visa categories have seen advancement. This is an encouraging indication that a larger number of visa numbers are available for Fiscal Year 2024 (FY-2024). By advancing the final action dates, the Department of State is signaling an intention to keep visa issuance well-distributed throughout the fiscal year, avoiding backlogs or rush...
USCIS issued policy guidance to allow a more flexible review of whether or not an employer has demonstrated its ability to pay the proffered wage from the priority date. This is a huge relief to many employers whose ability may not be evident on a tax return but has other financial documents such as credit limit/bank lines to more than cover the wage commitment to the beneficiary.
September 2023 September 2023 Visa Bulletin Highlights Family-Sponsored Second Preference (F2A) Retrogression: A significant update has been made regarding the F2A category. A cutoff date of 09/01/2023 has been assigned to the dates of filing chart. This indicates that I-485 based on F2A should be filed within this month, August 2023. Steady Employment-Based Number Use: Employment-based number...
On August 19, 2022, the US Department of Education no longer recognizes the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) as an accrediting agency. On November 1, 2022, USCIS announced how the loss of recognition will impact certain immigration benefit applicants. Students from impacted schools should contact their DSO immediately and discuss how to maintain their status....
Update Post, January 12, 2023 Starting January 30, 2023, premium processing will be available to new and pending: -E13 multinational executive/manager petitions. I-140 (NIW) -E21 NIW petitions no more phased expansion of premium processing. I-140 (EB-1C) Update Post, September 16, 2022 USCIS continues to expand premium processing for certain petitioners who have a pending Form I-140, Immigrant...
On May 5, 2022, USCIS announced changes to simplify and improve how the agency communicates case processing time data to the public. Users can now immediately find the processing time information for their particular type of case, rather than seeing an aggregate of all related case types. Additional changes include: Adding drop-down options for form categories will help narrow results to only...
Update 06/28/2022 We are now seeing the results of the requests to transfer the underlying basis ("relink"). We started filing the requests in February. Below is a sample. In addition to sending out the written request to relink, our advice is to follow up on that request by calling USCIS and initiating a service inquiry. Client has both I-140 EB2 and I-140 EB3. I-140 485 EB3 Concurrent Filing...
The processing times here generally cover PERM-based I-140s. EB-1a, EB-1b, and EB-2 NIW will be highlighted in other posts. Update 12/01/2022 Sample I-140 approval from TSC showing a continued trend toward faster adjudication. This one took less than a month. Update 09/26/2022 Some recent samples showing processing times from 1 to 7 months. The trend is toward faster adjudication. Update...
