U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that the initial registration period for the fiscal year 2024 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 1 and run through noon Eastern on March 17, 2023. During this period, prospective petitioners and representatives will be able to complete and submit their registrations using our online H-1B [...]
USCIS announced that: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is implementing the final phase of the premium processing expansion for Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers, under the EB-1 and EB-2 classifications. Unlike previous phases of the expansion, this phase applies to new (initial) petitions, in addition to all previously filed Form I-140 petitions under [...]
The proposed fee increase announced recently by the USCIS is currently in the 60-day comment period which ends on March 6, 2023. If there are enough comments to offset some of the increases, there could be delays while the USCIS consolidates the publication of the Final Rule. Given that H-1B CAP registration begins in the [...]
The proposed fee rule is the result of a comprehensive fee review at USCIS. That review determined that the agency’s current fees, which have remained unchanged since 2016, fall far short of recovering the full cost of agency operations. USCIS generally publishes a fee rule biennially, and proposes these changes to account for the expansion [...]
Attorney Vaman Kidambi shares insights into the confusion surrounding "Requests for Evidence" (RFEs) and how seemingly extremely similar, if not identical, cases result in different outcomes, urging USCIS to reengage with stakeholders on this issue. https://thinkimmigration.org/blog/2022/11/30/rfe-the-acronym-that-continues-to-confound-and-bewilder-practitioners/
USCIS conducted a comprehensive fee review as we are required to do every two years by federal law and determined that current fees do not recover the full cost of providing adjudication and naturalization services. Therefore, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is publishing a proposed rule that would adjust the USCIS fee schedule to [...]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposes to adjust certain immigration and naturalization benefit request fees charged by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Written comments must be submitted on this proposed rule on or before March 6, 2023. The electronic Federal Docket Management System will accept comments before midnight eastern time at the end [...]