The White House recently announced in a Presidential Memorandum that it is focusing on B-1 and B-2 visitor overstays and will begin engaging with relevant governments to identify conditions contributing to high overstay rates among their nationals, and make appropriate recommendations. Twenty countries have overstay rate of more than 10 percent, the basis on which […]
Palmer Polaski Blog
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’ chances of staying in the country. The complaint draws from interviews of attorneys practicing in the El […]
The following additional items may be of interest to our readers: H-1B Cap Reached in First Week of Filing: 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 […]
The U.S. embassy in Israel announced that an E-2 treaty investor agreement has been signed between the United States and Israel and will become effective May 1, 2019. Accordingly, Israeli citizens will be able to apply for E-2 visas at the U.S. Embassy Branch Office in Tel Aviv. The embassy advises that the E-1/E-2 visa […]
On April 16, the Attorney General (AG) issued a decision in an asylum case, ruling that asylum seekers who entered between ports of entry – even if they establish a credible fear of persecution – are no longer eligible for release on bond by an immigration judge. The decision sweeps aside long-standing court precedent and […]
It looks like DHS is close to publishing a regulation that will eliminate the eligibility for employment authorization of certain H-4 dependent spouses of H-1B nonimmigrants who are seeking employment-based lawful permanent resident status. Commonly known as the H-4 EAD rescission regulation, the rule was sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on […]
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 that if the derivative beneficiary (spouse or child) was listed on an immigrant visa petition (e.g., […]
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 of almost 10,000 visa denials on public charge grounds (3,237 in FY […]
The following additional items may be of interest to our readers: Cap-Subject H-1Bs Filed April 2018 Remain Pending; Premium Processing Now Available for H-1B Petitions Filed on or Before 12/21/2018: 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 […]
USCIS has updated its guidance identifying factors officers should consider when adjudicating a Form I-130 spousal petition involving a minor. Those factors include: (1) whether the marriage was lawful in the place it was celebrated; (2) if the couple resides outside the place of celebration, whether the marriage is recognized as valid in the U.S. […]
