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H-1B Cap Reached in First Week of Filing:
April 5th, 2019
USCIS has received enough H-1B cap-subject visa petitions to exceed the statutory limit of 65,000 visas (plus 20,000 Master’s cap visas). In fact, over 201,000 petitions were received this year, a modest increase from last year’s lottery submissi…
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When Can Denaturalization Occur?
April 4th, 2019
The federal government may seek to revoke U.S. citizenship under two general grounds: (1) illegal procurement of naturalization, and (2) procurement of naturalization by concealing a material fact or by willful misrepresentation. Procuring naturaliza…
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Extension of TPS for South Sudan:
April 2nd, 2019
USCIS extended the designation of South Sudan for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months from 5/3/19 through 11/2/20. The re-registration period runs from 4/5/19 through 6/4/19.
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Immigration Lawyers and Advocates Sue Immigration Court in El Paso
April 1st, 2019
AILA and the American Immigration Council recently filed a lawsuit against the U.S. immigration court in El Paso, claiming that the court at the El Paso Service Processing Center (SPC) has arbitrary and unjust rules that decrease asylum-seekers’ ch…
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DOS Offers Guidance to Derivative Beneficiaries Completing Form DS-160
March 4th, 2019
How a derivative beneficiary (of an immigrant petition) should answer the question on a DS-160 nonimmigrant visa application, “Has an immigrant petition ever been filed on your behalf” is not clear and often perplexing. On its face, it appears th…
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Lawsuits Challenge Trump’s National Emergency Declaration:
March 1st, 2019
The American Civil Liberties Union, environmental groups, Texas landowners, and 16 states have filed lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border as an unconstitutional overreach of exe…
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Cap-Subject H-1Bs Filed April 2018 Remain Pending; Premium Processing Now Available for H-1B Petitions Filed on or Before 12/21/2018:
February 28th, 2019
Inexplicably, numerous FY 2019 H-1B cap-subject petitions (filed in April 2018 for visas that became available on October 1, 2018) remain pending with the California Service Center. USCIS has indicated that it is unable to provide a timeframe for the…
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New I-539 Form Must Be Used Starting on 3/11/2019
February 26th, 2019
USCIS announced that it has revised Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status, and that starting March 11, 2019, it will only accept the new version of the form. A new Form I-539A, also effective March 11, replaces the amendment pa…
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Immigration Court Backlog Grows by 26 Percent
February 22nd, 2019
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the administration’s plan to shrink the ballooning backlog of immigration cases by mandating that immigration judges hear more cases has failed, according to the latest data, with the average…
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Department of State’s “Invisible Wall”
February 19th, 2019
Recent data released by the Department of State reveal that it too is laying brick after brick of an invisible wall that is curbing legal immigration to the United States. Visa inadmissibility statistics in FY 2018 reveal an uptick in just one year o…
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