US Immigration News

If you filed an I-918 U application in or after March 2014, you probably feel like you’ve been stuck in a time warp. The Vermont Service Center (VSC) seemingly hasn’t worked on any new I-918 cases since March 2014. Month after month, thousands of new I-918s get filed, yet, no old cases get adjudicated. USCIS has repeatedly

Sometimes people don’t think about filing for Naturalization until their green card is about to expire. They look at the cost of applying for a Naturalization (the N-400 is $680.00) and then they look at the cost of applying for a green card renewal (the I-90 is $365.00) and decide it may be more cost-effective to just do Naturalization. Which may

Over the past few years, we’ve talked about how only 10,000 U visas are available each year, and how on October 1 each year – the start of the government’s fiscal year and when new visas become available – U visas are gone faster and faster. We are now at a point where so many U applications have been

The National Visa Center (NVC) plays a key part in helping bring family members together. It’s an office within the U.S. Department of State and serves to collect documents and information needed for an immigrant visa interview that will be held at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate outside the United States. A file arrives at

Late last fall, I wrote about how U visas were gone for 2014. Now again, USCIS has run out of U visas. The government fiscal year begins on October 1st. That means that the fiscal year 2015 is from October 1, 2014, through September 30, 2015. When Congress created the U visa, they made it so

Last week, I was up in the Northeast. I spent the weekend in Groton, Connecticut with my brother and his family and then, on Tuesday, I headed north towards Boston for our American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Annual Conference. En route from Groton to Boston, I stopped in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Or as they like to

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice released numbers that show the approval and denial rates from Immigration Courts and individual Immigration Judges around the U.S. Nationally, the average asylum grant rate in immigration courts is 53% which, effectively, brings the national denial rate to 47%. In contrast, the Stewart Detention Center in south

When we talk about adjustment of status, we typically think about a newlywed couple where one spouse is a U.S. citizen and the other is not. Much of the information out there about the adjustment of status focuses on the types of documents and questions that the couple should expect USCIS to want and ask. But