Tuesday, June 17, 2008

USCIS Announces 2-Year EAD Issuance Beginning From 06/30/2008

The USCIS has announced that they will issue 2 year employment authorization cards beginning June 30, 2008. It only applies for those applicants who have filed an I-485 for adjustment of status and are expected to be in that status, waiting for a visa number for more than a year. This provides some relief for the vast number of EB-3 filers who have over half a decade long wait and had to file for an EAD every year. The cost of EAD filing was increased to $340 last July and asking people to keep paying that kind of money every year is nothing short of fleecing. What is the cost to reprint a card every year? Surely not $340! Looking at the card itself, I would be surprised if its anything more than $50. There is either a lot of inefficiency or unnecessary paperwork involved here. It would be shameful and immoral if this $340 repeat fee was used as a means to generate income for USCIS.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Visa Bulletin - July 2008

Every month around the 15th day, the U.S. Dept. of State, releases the visa bulletin which lists who can avail of a visa number next month to gain permanent residency. This bulletin breaks down the numbers based on the category and also separates out over-subscribed countries from the rest of the world. When you apply for permanent residency you get a case number and a priority date. If your priority date is earlier than the date listed in the visa bulletin for your application category, USCIS will proceed with your case and in most cases you will get your permanent resident card in a few months. Here are the cut-off dates for employment-based permanent residency categories from the July 2008 visa bulletin:

For persons born in India:
CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB201 Apr 2004No change
EB3UnavailableWas 01 Nov 2001

For persons born in China:

CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB201 Apr 2004
No change
EB3Unavailable
Was 22 Mar 2003

For persons born in Phillipines:
CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB2Current
No change
EB3Unavailable
Was 01 Mar 2006

For persons born in Mexico:
CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB2CurrentNo change
EB3Unavailable
Was 01 Jul 2002

For rest of the world:
CategoryCut-off DateMovement from previous month
EB1CurrentNo change
EB2CurrentNo change
EB3Unavailable
Was 01 Mar 2006

Most IT related applicants would fall under EB3. That's retrogressed by over 6 years now for applicants born in India.

Special announcement on EB-3 availability in the future:
Demand for numbers, primarily by USCIS for adjustment of status cases, will bring the entire Employment Third preference category to the annual numerical limit by the end of June. As a result, this category will become “unavailable” beginning in July and will remain so for the remainder of FY-2008. Such action will only be temporary, however, and Employment Third preference availability will return to the cut-off dates established for June in October, the first month of the new fiscal year.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

NYT - The Great Immigration Panic

Today's editorial in the New York Times though not related to skilled legal immigration but to the illegal kind, talks about the mood in the US on immigration in general and acknowledges the fact that legal channels are practically closed. Some excerpts:
Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegal immigration. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense of who we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement fever breaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize the country that did it.

A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully.

This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way. Ellis Island is closed. Legal paths are clogged or do not exist. Some backlogs are so long that they are measured in decades or generations. A bill to fix the system died a year ago this month. The current strategy, dreamed up by restrictionists and embraced by Republicans and some Democrats, is to force millions into fear and poverty.

The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.

Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrived immigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history. Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.

Employment based bills not yet considered

The US Congress is back from the Memorial Day recess and many of the bills that were introduced in the house are yet to be scheduled in the calendar. With election year politics, the remaining months would polarize the vested interests further and fail to pass any legislation that could bring about relief to the skilled immigrant community. Comprehensive immigration reform advocates do not want any immigration related bills to pass until the new president is sworn in and comprehensive reform is taken up for debating. In the meantime the agony for frustrated applicants caught in the retrogressions continue.