The August Visa Bulletin was released last week, and it contained significant retrogressions (EB-2 worldwide). Other categories have been experiencing retrogression as the fiscal year draws to a close. September 30 is the final date of the fiscal year and October 1 is the inaugural day of the new fiscal year. USCIS announced that the final action priority date cannot be used for filing adjustment of status applications. This is instead of the more friendly filing action priority date, which is usually a few months before the final action priority date. This is for employment-based and family-based adjustment of status applications.

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A federal judge in Seattle has dismissed the Visa Bulletin lawsuit that ensued from the Department of State rescission of filing dates. Back in September 2015, it seemed that the Department of State had made enormous progress in modernizing the Visa Bulletin system, so that individuals (especially in the EB-2 and EB-3 categories and some FB categories) were finally able to file for their Green Cards after years of waiting. Their anticipation lasted about two weeks when the Department suddenly rescinded its October Visa bulletin posting and superseded it with a new October Visa Bulletin.

A class-action lawsuit was filed seeking a temporary injunction, but that was rejected. This most recent rejection occurred because the judge found that the original Visa Bulletin did not confer any rights upon the immigrants. Although the announcement caused a reliance for intending applicants by undergoing medical exams and paying expenses for green card applications, that was not enough. The two week blip on the radar was an inconvenience, but nothing that could create relief for the class. June’s Visa Bulletin contains severe retrogression in many employment and family categories.

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The Department of State has released the 2016 May Visa Bulletin.

Employment Based-2 and Employment Based-3 categories for India moved only a few weeks. The filing date is July 1, 2009 for EB-2 India. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have their own chargeability in the employment-based category but not in the family-based category.

Family Based-2 for all non-listed chargeabilities is June 15, 2015 (spouses of LPRs). There is no filing date for the family-based categories. That will be released later this month, according to the State Department.

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Periodically, Service Center Operations Directorate has a teleconference or meeting with AILA to inquire upon important issues relating to USCIS petitions and applications. Here are some highlights from the teleconference with SCOPS earlier this month.

H-1B change of status and extension of status applications continue to take a frustratingly long time and there is little action on USCIS’ behalf to mitigate that problem. Their best advice is to file as early as possible.

If the petitioner files a Power of Attorney and includes it with the petition, the attorney can sign the forms for the petitioner on an employment-based petition.

Green Cards will not contain a hyphen. They will put a space instead, i.e. Smith Diaz instead of Smith-Diaz.

Both the Texas Service Centers and Nebraska Service Centers will follow Matter of H-V-P. This is an important AAO decision for National Interest Waiver cases.

USCIS confirmed that they adjudicate cases FIFO – First in First Out.

USCIS is actively processing U visa cases.

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Continue to expect delays in receiving Prevailing Wage Requests from the Department of Labor. The Department of Labor held a meeting and addressed the delay in returning Prevailing Wage Determinations. The Prevailing Wage Determination is the important first step for an employer to take in sponsoring for a permanent position. The Department of Labor has a stated goal of 60 days to analyze the Prevailing Wage Request and made a determination. The wage that it determines is necessary for the position is the minimum wage that the position can pay.

The Department has announced that stakeholders should expect determinations to take at least 75 days. The online system is supposed to speed up the process, but the increase in prevailing wage requests versus the stagnation of funding and resources, according to the Department of Labor, has forced the return times to lengthen.

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The Washington Post has reported a recent malfunction, resulting in USCIS sending hundreds of Permanent Resident (Green Cards) to incorrect addresses. This causes all sorts of headaches, involving USPS and USCIS, and unnecessary delays. It is important to make sure that you are updating your address with USCIS (and if applicable, the Immigration Court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement) whenever you move.

USCIS switched over to the ELIS system in 2012 for delivering Green Cards. A report from the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security notes that the number of incorrectly sent Green Cards has increased since then.

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It is that time again: The April 2016 Visa Bulletin has been released by the Department of State. You can find all of the final action dates and filing dates posted for Employment- and Family-Based categories.

The expected jump did not come for EB-2 India category. Charlie Oppenheimer had predicted 3 month leaps, but we will keep our eyes peeled for that leap in May.

There was only slight movement in the Family-Based categories.

The reason that there are limits and cutoff dates is because there is a limited allocation of immigrant visas, prescribed by country, category, and preference. Here is the State Department’s explanation of calculations:

1. Procedures for determining dates. Consular officers are required to report to the Department of State documentarily qualified applicants for numerically limited visas; USCIS reports applicants for adjustment of status. Allocations in the charts below were made, to the extent possible, in chronological order of reported priority dates, for demand received by March 9th. If not all demand could be satisfied, the category or foreign state in which demand was excessive was deemed oversubscribed. The cut-off date for an oversubscribed category is the priority date of the first applicant who could not be reached within the numerical limits. If it becomes necessary during the monthly allocation process to retrogress a cut-off date, supplemental requests for numbers will be honored only if the priority date falls within the new cut-off date announced in this bulletin. If at any time an annual limit were reached, it would be necessary to immediately make the preference category “unavailable”, and no further requests for numbers would be honored.

2. Section 201 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) sets an annual minimum family-sponsored preference limit of 226,000. The worldwide level for annual employment-based preference immigrants is at least 140,000. Section 202 prescribes that the per-country limit for preference immigrants is set at 7% of the total annual family-sponsored and employment-based preference limits, i.e., 25,620. The dependent area limit is set at 2%, or 7,320.

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The backlong continues for the eight asylum offices in the United States. Affirmative asylum is when someone applies for asylum in the United States without being in immigration court. Defensive asylum is applying for asylum in the United States in immigration court. That happens in front of a judge. The affirmative asylum process demands that an application is filed within one year of the applicant’s arrival in the United States, unless there is a qualifying exception for why the application was not filed in time.

USCIS publishes its waiting times for asylum interviews. If you are in Pittsburgh, you belong in the jurisdiction of the Arlington office. The waiting times give an indication of how long it takes for your case to be heard by an Asylum Officer, who is responsible for making the decision on whether the application is granted asylum or not.

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The Department of State released the February 2016 Visa Bulletin. It also published the Immigrant Visa Waiting List Report, which is an annual publication of the number of visa applicants on the waiting list in the preferences and subcategories. There is a wait list because of statutory numerical restrictions. For example, 28.7% of immigrant visas may come from Employment-Based 1 (EB-1) preference. EB-2 and EB-3 preferences for the China and India chargeabilities are the perpetually oversubscribed categories. Oversubscribed means that there are more people applying than spots available for immigrant visas.

One encouraging sign is movement in the EB-2 India category. It jumped 6 months from February 1, 2008 for the final action date to August 1, 2008. The visa bulletin continues to employ the filing and final action date system. The filing date for EB-2 India is July 1, 2009.

The data from the Department of State shows that over half of petitions are filed Family-Based 4 (FB-4), which is US citizens filing for their siblings. This category for all chargeabilities has an excruciating long wait period. On the Employment-Based side, there was a major increase in EB-5 petitions filed and considerable increases in the number of EB-1 and EB-2 petitions filed in 2015 as opposed to 2014. The agency’s report also includes a per country list. This is important because there is a per country limitation of no more than 7% of all immigrant visas issued for one country.

The post Visa Bulletin News appeared first on Wood Immigration Law.

For the seventh consecutive year, USCIS has granted the statutory maximum of 10,000 U visas. That means until October 1, the beginning of the 2017 Fiscal Year, USCIS is unable to grant an applicant U visa status. In the alternative, USCIS will place applicants on a waiting list. The waiting list allows an applicant to apply for employment authorization. It basically means that the applications looks like it can be approved, but it cannot be approved at the present time because there are no more U visas available. There does not seem to be any congressional push to increase the statutory limit.

Quotas and statutory limits are a reality of immigration law. There are green card quotas, hence the Visa Bulletin, and there are statutory limits on the number of certain kinds of visas that can be granted. The H-1B statutory cap is one such prominent example.

The U visa is unique, in that it offers relief to a victim of a qualifying crime. It is also unique in the sense that it does not require prior legal status to execute a change of status. The standard is that switching to a visa requires the applicant to maintain status. For example, someone cannot change her status to an E-2 visa if she is out of status. That person must maintain a valid status in order to make that change.

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