Business Immigration Insights

Beginning on May 6, 2013, anyone attending an interview at a local USCIS field office or seeking to obtain evidence of an immigration benefit — e.g., employment authorization document, temporary I-551 stamp, or advance parole travel document — will be required to submit digital fingerprints and photos, under USCIS’s new “Customer Identification Verification” (CIV) program.

This biometric data will be input into the “US VISIT” database and will be available to USCIS for future benefits adjudications, and to USCBP, during primary, secondary and deferred ...

The USCIS announced that it received 124,000 Fiscal Year 2014 H-1B petitions between April 1, 2013, and April 5, 2013, including petitions filed for the advanced degree H-1B visas.  The lottery, which was held on Sunday, April 7, 2012, was conducted by a computer-generated random process for the 20,000 advanced degree H-1Bs.  Those not selected were added to a second lottery for the other 65,000 H-1Bs.  Receipt notices for those selected should arrive in the coming weeks.  The USCIS confirmed that it will begin adjudicating petitions filed under the expedited “Premium Processing” ...

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced this afternoon that as of April 5, 2013, it has received sufficient H-1B petitions (regular and master’s cases) to reach the statutory cap for Fiscal Year 2014 (10/1/2013 through 9/30/2014). This is significantly faster than the current fiscal year, when the cap was not reached until June 11, 2012.  Because the cap was met during the first five business days that employers could file Fiscal year 2014 petitions, a lottery will be held in the coming weeks to determine which cases will be accepted for processing, and which will be rejected.  Those chosen in the lottery will be issued receipt notices; those rejected will receive the original filings back from USCIS.