Immigration Blog

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has launched Freedom of Information Act Immigration Records SysTem (FIRST) – a new system for online processing of Freedom of Immigration Act (FOIA) requests. Up until now, USCIS only accepted FOIA requests by mail, fax, and email, and requesters typically received their documents on a CD by mail. FIRST […]

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has completed data entry of all FY 2019 H1B Cap petitions selected in the H1B lottery. USCIS will now begin returning all H1B Cap petitions that were not selected in the 2018 H1B lottery. USCIS has not provided a time frame for returning these petitions, but has stated that […]

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USCIS has issued a new policy memorandum for calculating unlawful presence for students and exchange visitors in F, J, and M nonimmigrant status, and their dependents. Under the new policy that will go into effect on August 9, 2018, F, J, and M nonimmigrants who failed to maintain their status before August 9, 2018, will […]

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USCIS has completed the CW-1 lottery to select enough petitions to meet the annual cap of 4,999 for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program. USCIS had earlier announced that it would conduct a lottery to randomly select CW-1 petitions received between April 2, 2018 and April 13, 2018, and […]

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Starting April 30, 2018, USCIS will begin using USPS Signature Confirmation Restricted Delivery service to mail Green Cards and other secure documents. In the first phase, USCIS will use this new delivery method for documents that need to be re-mailed because they have been returned as non-deliverable, including Permanent Resident Cards, EADs, and Travel Booklets. […]

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