September 23, 2020|Contributed by: Shana D. Velez
Beginning today, September 23, 2020, asylum seekers are not allowed to bring their own interpreters if they speak one of 47 languages specified in the regulation. Those languages include: Akan, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Burmese, Cantonese, Creole/Haitian Creole, Farsi-Afghani/Dari, Farsi-Iranian, Foo Chow/Fuzhou, French, Georgian, Gujarati, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesia/Bahasa, Konjobal, Korean, Kurdish, Lingala, […]
September 22, 2020|Contributed by: Zachary New
September 17th was this year’s annual “Citizenship Day,” when we celebrate the day on which our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787, and a day to recognize and celebrate those seeking to become U.S. citizens. September 17-23 is also broadly recognized as “Citizenship Week,” when agencies, community organizers, attorneys, and future citizens […]
September 17, 2020|Contributed by: Joseph & Hall P.C.
Today, over 150 United States Citizens and their foreign national intended spouses sued the Department of State for continued refusal to process K-1 fiancée visas. The K-1 visa allows foreign nationals to enter the U.S. and marry their petitioning fiancé(e). Although the I-129F petitions have been approved by the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services […]
September 1, 2020|Contributed by: Aaron C. Hall, Esq.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that going forward, people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) who travel abroad and re-enter with advance parole will not be deemed to have been inspected and admitted or paroled into the United States for purposes of adjustment of status applications. For people who originally entered the United […]
August 27, 2020|Contributed by: Jennifer Howard
What is the current status of the new public charge rules? @ S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (stateside): Under a July 29, 2020 court ruling in New York, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot “enforce, apply, implement, or treat as effective” its new public charge rule “for any period during which there is […]
August 26, 2020|Contributed by: Aaron C. Hall, Esq.
After weeks of threatening to furlough 70% of its staff at the end of August unless it received a $1.2 billion Congressional bailout, USCIS announced yesterday that the agency is funded through fiscal year 2020. Despite this, applicants should continue to expect long wait times and delays in the adjudication of all applications filed with […]
August 26, 2020|Contributed by: Shana D. Velez
On August 21, 2020, USCIS issued guidance to its officers to reject all initial DACA applications until USCIS decides to begin accepting applications in the future, accept DACA renewal requests but reject those that are filed more than 150 days prior to expiration of their current DACA status, and grant deferred action for only one […]
August 26, 2020|Contributed by: Zachary New
In March of this year, employers signed up prospective employees for the H-1B “lottery,” wherein nearly 275,000 individuals were registered to compete for a coveted 85,000 visas. The initial selection was completed at the end of March, and the opportunity to apply for an H-1B was awarded to 85,000 individuals. Subsequently, employers began filing their […]
August 25, 2020|Contributed by: Aaron C. Hall, Esq.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking which will dramatically alter the role of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in removal proceedings. Provisions of the proposed rule include: Codification of the Trump Administration’s elimination of administrative closure in removal proceedings from Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018) […]
August 4, 2020|Contributed by: Jennifer Howard
On June 18, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Trump administration’s 2017 attempt to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was legally improper because the government agency failed to provide a reasoned explanation for its action. As explained in a previous post, the Court’s decision left the door open for […]
