The Department of Homeland Security has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a long-planned regulation to toughen H-1B eligibility criteria and impose new obligations on H-1B employers. OMB review is the next step toward implementing the regulation, which President Trump…
USCIS will implement a new fee schedule on October 2, 2020, and with it, new versions of several key employment-based immigration forms, including new editions of the Form I-129 nonimmigrant worker petition for H-1B, L-1, O-1 and other key nonimmigrant categories. The…
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today announced that the agency will avert a much anticipated furlough of more than 13,000 employees through September 30, the end of FY 2020. The furlough had been scheduled to begin on August 30. According to…
The U.S. House of Representatives has unanimously passed an emergency stopgap bill that would expand the premium processing program at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in order to prevent around 13,000 agency employees from being furloughed on August 30. If passed…
According to the State Department’s September Visa Bulletin, cutoff dates for issuance of an immigrant visa will be as follows: EB-1: All countries except for China and India will remain current in September. China and India will advance by three weeks to…
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that due to COVID-19-related delays in the production of Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), certain foreign nationals may use an EAD approval notice to establish employment authorization during the I-9 verification process, even though such notices…
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will continue to implement the Trump Administration’s ban on “non-essential” travel across U.S. land borders and ferry travel with Mexico and Canada through September 21, according to a DHS Fact Sheet. The restrictions were due to expire…
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced today that it is extending for another 30 days, or until September 19, 2020, its relaxed enforcement of the normal requirement to physically inspect the original documents presented by new hires during the I-9 process…
USCIS today began notifying employers and their immigration counsel of the results of a second selection lottery for the FY 2021 H-1B cap. Employers whose H-1B registrations are selected in the second drawing will have from August 17 to November…
The Second Circuit on Wednesday revived the Trump administration's Public Charge Rule for immigrants, narrowing a New York federal judge's earlier ruling that had blocked the contested immigration rule nationwide during the coronavirus pandemic. In a brief order signed by…