The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has named Mark Koumans as its Deputy Director. Koumans has a background of service with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and its umbrella agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Koumans also served for 17 years with...
Canadians who qualify for L-1 Manager, Executive, or Specialized Knowledge employee visas can look forward to another year of remote adjudications at the Blaine, Washington port of entry. The pilot program, scheduled to expire on April 30, 2019, has been extended for one year until...
Although family-based petitions account for over two-thirds of all immigration approvals, the future may bring increasing legislative scrutiny and quota restrictions, as lawmaking discussions focus on business immigration visas. In its 2017 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recorded 1.1 million total...
As we reported in March, the E-2 Treaty Investor program is set to begin processing visa applications by Israeli businesses, nationals, and citizens starting on May 1, 2019. Israeli businesses and their staff may file directly with the U.S. embassy branch office in Tel Aviv without...
In a Policy Alert issued last week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) confirmed its stance on controlled substance laws: violations of federal laws on controlled substances will continue to affect determinations of an alien’s good moral character, even if local state laws have...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on its I-526 website that a new version of the filing form I-526, Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur, is now available. The latest version of the form, dated 04/15/2019, is substantively identical to the previous version, retaining the...
China’s EB-5 waiting list continued to see slow progress with the projected May 2019 Visa Bulletin, moving one week forward to 09/22/2014. Vietnam, the only other nation with an EB-5 cut-off date, moved forward a full month to 09/22/2016, suggesting that a consistent waiting time...
Over the last two months, immigration groups and business spokespersons have met with senior administration officials, seeking a legislative solution to employment-based immigration programs including EB-5. The talks, which began during the federal government funding shutdown in January, included input from Department of Homeland Security (DHS)...
USCIS has received a sufficient number of new H-1B skilled worker visa petitions to reach the congressionally-mandated 65,000 H-1B visa regular cap for fiscal year 2020. Under new USCIS procedures, USCIS now determine there are a sufficient number of new Master’s Cap H-1B petitions to meet...
