The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had recently issued revised guidance on the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) age calculation, resolving an inconsistency in the previous guidance that left certain adjustment applicants without guaranteed CSPA protection. The CSPA aims to protect certain noncitizens from losing eligibility as a child for immigrant visa and adjustment ..read more

Read News4Jax’s Article “With such a divide in opinions, mostly along party lines, News4Jax looked at the legal grounds with immigration attorney Ashwin Sharma. “The facilities in Texas and these other border states are substantially overwhelmed. So I assume that that’s why they’re having to go to non-border states like Florida,” attorney Ashwin Sharma said ..read more

Via AILA.org AILA and its litigation partners entered into a settlement agreement with DHS that provides structural changes for H-4 and L-2 spouses suffering from long delayed processing times for the processing of applications for employment authorization. (Shergill, et al. v. Mayorkas, 11/10/21) For H-4s:Within 120 days of the Effective Date, USCIS will amend the ..read more

VIA USCIS.gov “On Sept. 29, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in Immigration Legal Resource Center et al., v. Wolf, et al., 20-cv-05883-JWS, preliminarily enjoined DHS from implementing or enforcing any part of the USCIS Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements rule. While the rule is preliminarily enjoined, we will continue to:  Accept USCIS forms with the current ..read more

DOS has posted the October 2020 visa bulletin. In addition to final action dates and dates for filing for family and employment-based petitions, it contains notes on the DV category, the DV category rank cut-offs which will apply in November, movement of the October final action and application filing dates, visa availability in the coming ..read more

A group of 174 Indian nationals, including seven minor children, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging Presidential Proclamation 10052, which took effect on June 24, 2020, and temporarily suspends entry of certain H, J, and L nonimmigrants into the United States. The plaintiffs seek an order declaring ..read more

Good news for international students: DHS just did another one of its 180 degree pirouettes. Facing several federal lawsuits as well as vigorous opposition from hundreds of universities, the Trump Administration today rescinded a rule that would have required international students to transfer or leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online because ..read more

I was quoted today in a Times of India article on USCIS’s issuance of a game-changing new policy memorandum yesterday in which it rescinds and replaces two previous policy memoranda (2010, 2018) regarding the adjudication of H-1B petitions for professionals assigned to third-party job sites. Among its other directives, the memo instructs USCIS officers to stop requiring ..read more

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, also known as DACA, was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. As a result, the Trump administration may not immediately proceed with its plan to end a program protecting about 700,000 ..read more

“Sharma also said H-1B employees face another challenge. The inability of an employee to continue working and retaining insurance benefits because of USCIS’s historic delays in adjudicating extensions (again, for the H-1B in particular, the present unavailability of the premium processing option leaves H-1B employers and employees in a very difficult predicament). “The USCIS’s delay ..read more