U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that the revised Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status, and new Form I-539A, will be published on March 8, 2019, not March 11 as previously reported. USCIS will accept the old form through March 21. Form I-539 is used for a variety of application types, including: […]
President Trump’s Buy American Hire American Executive Order (BAHA) has little relevance in an economy where the unemployment rate is 4% and the Labor Department has reported that there is a record high of 7.3 million job openings. BAHA has however been deployed to make life harder for legal immigrants who do their best to […]
The new USCIS Policy on Unlawful Presence for F, J and M Nonimmigrants took effect on August 9, 2018. This policy has had the effect of rendering nonimmigrants in F, J and M status, mainly students, unlawfully present upon being found to have violated their status. Under the new policy, unlawful presence started accruing on […]
On Friday, January 11, 2019, many were intrigued by President Trump’s tweet assuring H-1B visas that they should expect a potential path to citizenship. This is what he tweeted: “H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a […]
Thank you for reading and supporting The Insightful Immigration Blog. Listed below are the top 10 most viewed blogs that were published in 2018. While these are the 10 most viewed blogs, each blog is a carefully crafted gem, and we invite you to read all of them. In 2018, the Trump Administration continued its […]
When Kazarian v. USCIS, 596 F.3d 1115 (9th Cir. 2010), was first decided, it was received with much jubilation as it was thought that the standards for establishing extraordinary ability would be more straightforward and streamlined. Kazarian essentially holds that a petitioner claiming extraordinary ability need not submit extraordinary evidence to prove that he or she is a […]
The Trump Administration has proposed a rule that would require petitioners seeking to file H-1B cap-subject petitions to first electronically register with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) during a designated registration period. USCIS said the proposed rule would also reverse the order by which the agency selects H-1B petitions under the H-1B cap and […]
It has become harder to obtain an approval of an H-1B visa petition under the Trump administration. The USCIS insists that an occupation must require a degree in a specific specialty. It constantly moves the goalposts to deny H-1B petitions, even if the occupation was previously readily approvable. A position that requires an engineering degree […]
Ever since I co-wrote The Tyranny of Priority Dates in 2010, followed by How President Obama Can Erase Immigrant Visa Backlogs With A Stroke Of A Pen in 2012, I have steadfastly maintained that the current Trump and the prior administrations of Obama, Bush, Clinton and Bush (Senior), have got it wrong when counting visa […]
The notion of public charge has existed in our immigration laws since more than a century. The Trump administration’s new proposed public charge rule, however, interprets “is likely at any time to become a public charge” under INA 212(a)(4) in a way that would make it more difficult for people with lower incomes or less […]
