On June 6, 2017, in a Department of Labor (DOL) News Release, the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, announced plans to increase protections of American workers and “aggressively confront” visa program fraud and abuse. As a clear sign of a policy shift, Secretary...
The Department of State (DOS) has issued its June 2017 Visa Bulletin. Most notably, there has been a significant retrogression for the priority dates for EB-1 for China and India. Prior to the June 2017 Visa Bulletin, the priority dates for EB-1 for China and India...
As mentioned previously, USCIS completed the initial data entry of all 85,000 fiscal year 2018 H-1B CAP petitions that were selected for this year’s random selection process. USCIS will now adjudicate these 85,000 petitions over the next several months. In the event...
On March 6, 2017, a Presidential Memorandum directed the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security to implement heightened screening and vetting of applications for visas and other immigration benefits. In light of this memorandum, a notice was published on...
On May 3, 2017, USCIS announced that it has completed the data entry of all fiscal year 2018 H-1B CAP petitions that were selected. All H-1B CAP petitions that were not selected will begin to be returned. Unfortunately, the high volume of H-1B CAP filings prevents...
On April 7, 2017, USCIS announced that the H-1B Cap for fiscal year 2018 had been reached. What this means is that USCIS received over 65,000 petitions for the congressionally mandated regular visa cap and over 20,000 petitions for the congressionally mandated...