Business Immigration Insights

The Visa Bulletin is released monthly by the Department of State and is used to determine when a sponsored foreign national can submit the final step of the green card process. The complete visa bulletin can be found here.

Below is a summary of the May Visa Bulletin, including Final Action Dates and changes from the previous month:

Not surprisingly, the USCIS announced today that the FY2018 H-1B cap has been met.  The USCIS will hold a lottery for the H-1B visas as early as next week.  Those selected will receive receipt notices in the mail; those rejected will have their filings returned, along with the filing fee checks.   We expect that the receipt notices for those selected will begin to trickle in later this month through most of May; the rejected petitions will take longer to return.  The USCIS has not yet released the number of petitions it received.  Please check back for updates ...

On, March 31, 2017, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services rescinded a 17-year-old memorandum issued by the Nebraska Service Center regarding computer-related positions as H-1B “specialty occupations.”  For the last 10 years, all H-1B petitions have been processed at the Vermont and California Service Centers, so the memo has not been in use.  Since NSC recently began accepting H-1B extension petitions again, USCIS has rescinded the memo, stating it is outdated and inconsistent with the agency’s current approach to H-1B petitions for computer jobs.

Due to the upcoming temporary suspension of premium processing for all H-1B petitions on April 3, 2017, USCIS has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of premium processing cases it has received.  The Nebraska Service Center, which processes all H-1B extension petitions for non-cap exempt employers containing no changes to the beneficiary’s terms of employment, has announced that it will focus its resources on processing H-1B petitions in accordance with premium processing requirements.

The Visa Bulletin is released monthly by the Department of State and is used to determine when a sponsored foreign national can submit the final step of the green card process. The complete visa bulletin can be found here.

President Trump signed today the long-awaited revised travel ban Executive Order entitled, “Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States”, effective 12:01 a.m, Eastern Standard Time on March 16, 2017.  The list of affected countries includes Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen; Iraq was removed from the list.  Key provisions are as follows:

On Friday, March 3, 2017, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that premium processing service will be suspended for all H-1B petitions received on or after April 3, 2017. This suspension may remain in place for up to 6 months.

We are now less than two months away from the 2017 H-1B cap season. On April 3, 2017, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) will begin accepting H-1B petitions for fiscal year 2018 (October 1, 2017, through September 30, 2018).

It’s been a week since the Ninth Circuit unanimously upheld the temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s Executive Order known as the “Travel Ban”.   Shortly after the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, President Trump said that new security measures were imminent, however, no new executive orders have been issued.  While waiting for the next attempt at a legal travel ban or a way to revive the prior one, those born in one of the countries mentioned in the original ban (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) and those from other predominantly Muslim ...

The USCIS released its updated Handbook for Employers, which is available as a free download here.  The Handbook is a great resource for human resources personnel involved in the I-9 identity/work eligibility/reverification process.  Part Seven (FAQs) and Part Eight (acceptable documents) are especially helpful sections of the Handbook.