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Employment-Based Immigration, Family-Based Immigration, Green Card, Lawful Permanent Residency, Policy Change, U.S. Citizenship
Why Could Your Case Be Taking So Long? USCIS Processing Delays Remain at Crisis Level
Nationwide, you and millions of families, businesses, and individuals applying for immigration benefits are waiting longer for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to process and approve applications and petitions. Based on previously available USCIS data, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2014, an average case took about five months to process. In FY2020, an average case took more than nine months. Anyone who files applications or petitions with USCIS is affected. You and other people applying for family-based benefits, employment-based benefits, naturalization, travel documents, and employment authorization are all experiencing delays. Between FY2017 and FY2019, USCIS’s processing times for all petitions and application form types rose more than 37%. The dramatic…
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The 3 Agencies Involved in Immigrant Visa Cases: USCIS, NVC, and the U.S. Consulate/Embassy
I want to preface this post by saying that all three of these agencies are involved when a family member or employee is being petitioned for, and that person is not currently in the U.S. and will be processing at a U.S. consulate/embassy abroad. However, there are instances when a person is going through the immigration process that involves the I-601A stateside waiver process (you can read more about that process on this blog post), and dealing with these three agencies would also apply in those cases. For anyone who wants to be petitioned for, or if the person is self-petitioning, to become a green card holder in the U.S.,…
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Quicker Work Permits for U Nonimmigrant (U Visa) Petitioners and Qualifying Family Members
On June 14, 2021, USCIS issued a policy alert that will give principal petitioners (the main applicant) and qualifying family members with pending and valid U visa petitions work permits. To find out what a U visa is, you can go to my blog post here. The terms U nonimmigrant status and U visa are often used interchangeably but generally refer to the same immigration benefit. For purposes of this post, I will use the term U visa since that is the term that most people are familiar with. For anyone who has applied for a U visa, there is a huge backlog. I remember when I first started working…
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Public Charge Rule Updates and Other U.S. Immigration Changes Due to COVID-19
No one can deny that this year has been full of uncertainty and changes because of the pandemic. I cannot think of one sector or industry that has not been affected in one way or another, including our U.S. immigration system. Many changes have happened and as attorneys, we have had to navigate our way through these unprecedented times staying up to date on current events and how they will be affecting our clients’ cases. Within our immigration system, there are many different areas. For example, we have the immigration courts, the U.S. Department of State, USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), and the National Visa Center (NVC). Because of…
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U.S. Immigration and the 3 Ps – Processing Times, Policy Changes, and the President
U.S. Immigration has been a hot-button issue, and since this new administration, we’ve seen a huge shift in policies within our immigration system. Everything that has happened has made practicing immigration law interesting, to say the least. We’ve seen the controversial separation of families at the border, the travel ban being upheld, and more discretion than ever in allowing immigration officials/officers to deny applications. Processing times Cases are taking much longer to process than a couple of years ago. For example, a couple of years ago, adjustment of status applications based on marriage to a U.S. citizen used to take only 3 – 4 months from the time USCIS received…