As a follow up to our previous update, USCIS has confirmed that it completed its second H-1B lottery on Monday, July 31, and has notified all employers whose registrations were selected.
Read More
USCIS announced this morning that it will select additional H-1B lottery registrations from the registrations that were not selected in March 2023 in order to meet the annual limit (“cap”) of H-1B visas allocated for this coming year.
Read More
USCIS has announced that it will release an updated version of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, on August 1, 2023, which will be shorter and give employers that are enrolled in E-Verify the option to remotely examine the identity and employment authorization documents of their employees when completing the Form.
Read More
The Department of State (DOS) has issued its August 2023 Visa Bulletin, which indicates movement (some forward and some significantly backward) across most employment and family-based categories.
Read More
For international students in F-1 status, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently added eight new fields of study to the list of STEM degrees that qualify for a two-year extension of work authorization.
Read More
Earlier this week, a federal court ruled that the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) can require H-1B employers to file an amendment petition each time the H-1B worker changes their worksite outside of the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) listed in the previous H-1B petition.
Read More
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has rescinded the prior Administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (“TPS") for nationals of El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua effective June 9, 2023.
Read More
USCIS announced earlier this week that it will expand the availability of premium processing to pending applications to change status (Form I-539) to F-1, F-2, J-1, J-2, M-1 or M-2 effective June 13.
Read More
The Department of State (DOS) has issued its July 2023 Visa Bulletin, which has moderate movement across the majority of employment and family-based categories other than the EB-3 final action date for India, which will retrogress by nearly three and a half months to January 1, 2009.
Read More
Afghan nationals who were evacuated from Afghanistan under Operation Allies Welcome (“OAW”) in August 2021 and granted humanitarian parole in the United States will be able to extend their status in June 2023. Under OAW, Afghan nationals who had worked for the United States Embassy or for the United States government in Afghanistan were evacuated to the United States and granted humanitarian parole for two years on a case-by-case basis. The extension of humanitarian parole (“re-parole”) will allow them to continue living and working in the United States on a temporary basis. The Department of Homeland Security has not yet announced the specific process for obtaining “re-parole.”
Read More