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Federal District Judge Nicolas G. Garaufis struck down the Administration’s most recent attempt to limit the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. He held that the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, had not been properly appointed and therefore, his recent rollback of DACA was invalid. Rules regarding appointment and succession are…

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced the arrest of 15 individuals who claimed to work on Optional Practical Training (OPT) for nonexistent companies.  In addition, USCIS notified 700 OPT recipients suspected of being complicit in similar activities that it would revoke their employment authorization.  Further, USCIS notified an additional 400 OPT recipients that…

The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay a day after a federal district court held the Public Charge Rule violated the Administration Procedures Act (APA)  and issued summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. 

During October 2020, thousands of Adjustment of Status (AOS) applications were filed by individuals and law…

Having instituted a new on-line registration process for Cap H-1B petitions last year, on November 2, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to replace the random selection process with a process that prioritizes H-1B petitions with the highest wage levels.

DHS sees wage levels as a proxy for…

The B-1 in lieu of H-1B visa has been used by international companies to bring employees who remain on payrolls abroad to the United States for short periods of time (generally fewer than six months) to do professional level work that benefits the company abroad. Through the rulemaking process, the Department of State is proposing…

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released yet another rule that will make it harder and more costly for U.S. companies to employ highly skilled workers.

As a companion regulation to the “Strengthening Wage Protections for the Temporary and Permanent Employment of Certain Aliens in the United States” rule, DHS has released the…

Premium processing fees are going up (the bad news), but premium processing will be available for more types of cases (the good news) according to changes included in the recently passed Continuing Resolution (CR) that will fund the government until December 11, 2020. The changes are meant to provide additional funding to USCIS to bolster…

A federal judge in California has enjoined the USCIS’ new fee rule just a little more than a day before petitions and applications had to be postmarked.

Judge Jeffrey S. White’s decision in Immigrant Legal Resource Center v. Wolf was based on a finding that Chad Wolf’s appointment to the position of Acting Secretary of…

While it typically uses the “Final Action Dates” chart for accepting adjustment of status application filings, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that for October 2020, it will allow employment-based adjustment of status applicants to file based upon the U.S. Department of State’s (DOS) October “Dates for Filing” chart.

This means that individuals…