U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today announced a final rule published in the Federal Register adjusting the fees required for most immigration applications and petitions. The new fees will be effective December 23rd.

USCIS is almost entirely funded by the fees paid by applicants and petitioners for immigration benefits. The law requires USCIS to...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued an interim final rule that increases significantly the monetary fines assessed against employers for violations of the federal immigration law.

Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), employers are prohibited from:

• Knowingly hiring or employing unauthorized workers;
• Failing to properly complete employee Form I-9s; and
•...

Given that it is still very early in the new fiscal year, the final action dates in the November Visa Bulletin are not surprising. If you were to compare the October 2016 against the Visa Bulletin against the November Visa Bulletin you would find that almost all of DOS's predictions have materialized, with a...

Le visa nonimmigrant E-2 pour les investisseurs a pour objectif sous-jacent d’inciter les ressortissants de pays avec lesquels les Etats-Unis ont un accord commercial d’y venir via un investissement entrepreneurial. Cet investissement peut consister dans la création d’une entreprise, l’achat d’une société existante ou d’une franchise. Une entreprise peut également faire venir un ressortissant...

As a reminder to all U.S. employers, H-1B season is almost here! United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (“USCIS”) will start accepting new H-1B petitions for fiscal year 2018 on Saturday, April 1st, 2017. As such, employers should start immediately identifying current and future employees who will require sponsorship for new H-1B petitions. By...

The nonimmigrant E-2 visa for treaty investors has as its underlying policy the aim of incentiving foreign nationals to come into the U.S through business investment. This investment could either consist in creating a new company, buying an existing one or purchasing a franchise. Also, this company can have a foreign national come and...

President Obama signed a 10-week stopgap continuing resolution into law on September 29th, 2016 that included the extension of three visa authorizations. The extension of these visa programs will expire on December 9th, 2016. The three visa programs are the CONRAD State 30 Program, the non-minister special immigrant religious work program (SR visa), and...

EB-4 and Certain Religious Worker (SR) Preference Categories. As predicted last month, the final action dates for EB-4 India and EB-4 Mexico will be current again in October and the priority dates for EB-4 El Salvador/Guatemala/Honduras will advance to June 15th, 2015. While DOS considered establishing a separate final action date for Guatemala and...