The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently issued an announcement (PDF 40.6KB) that extends the suspension of premium processing services for religious worker (R-1) petitions for another six months, until July 8, 2008. A previous six-month suspension of such premium processing services was announced...
The USCIS provided some updated information on the many July and August I-485 Application for Adjustment of Status (AOS) filings, at an AILA conference held in late September 2007 at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. This information should prove useful to many MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers who...
The following questions and answers are based on those frequently posed to the attorneys at the Murthy Law Firm. We are sharing these to clarify information of concern to our clients and the entire immigrant community. MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers are reminded that these responses...
[See also, Part 1 of this NewsBrief.]As promised in our April 13, 2007 article, National Interest Waivers (Part 1 of 2), this week we share with readers some National Interest Waiver (NIW) case success stories from the Murthy Law Firm. These examples, approved over the...
[See also, Part 2 of this NewsBrief.]The NIW category falls within the employment-based, second preference category (EB2). In contrast to regular EB2 petitions, however, NIW cases are exempt from the labor certification and job offer requirement. This means that a person who does not have...
As a result of some recent litigation, the physician-specific National Interest Waiver (NIW) is now available to physicians in all specialties. This change, which was implemented nationwide in a memo dated January 23, 2007, is effective immediately. Background Prior to the litigation and the implementing memo, the...
As was noted in a special posting on MurthyDotCom late last week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued an announcement that it would begin to accept premium processing for Extraordinary Ability (EA) petitions as of Monday, November 13, 2006. This is the most...
The USCIS reissued a May 12, 2005 memo on AC21 I-485 and H1B matters. The memo bears a December 27, 2005 date. This latest memo is identical to the original, presumably only with one clarification. The earlier memo was reported to our readers when it...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on Friday, September 22, 2006 that the Premium Processing Program (PPP) for I-140 petitions filed by employers will expand as of Monday, September 25, 2006 to certain additional employment-based (EB) categories. Three new EB categories will be...
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced a significant change in filing procedures. The March 24, 2006 announcement advised that, effective from April 1, 2006, all I-129 Petitions should be filed with the Vermont Service Center (VSC) and all I-140 Petitions should be...
