The United States Department of Defense (DOD) issued a press release to announce a new plan designed to address the chronic shortage of doctors, nurses, and linguists in the United States Armed Forces. Under a trial program, the Military Accession Vital to National Interest Recruitment...
Many law firms representing physicians in the immigration process have begun noticing a disturbing new trend in the treatment of I-140 employer petitions filed in the employment-based, second preference (EB2) category on behalf of international medical graduates (IMGs). While it long has been a given...
The USCIS has just released a memo dated December 5, 2006, that makes significant positive changes to the counting of time for H1Bs, H-4s, L-1s, and L-2s. This Memo addresses three separate issues. It decouples time spent in H-4 or L-2 status from the time...
As anticipated, the President signed a temporary extension of the Conrad State Waiver program on October 8, 2008. The Conrad program is important for many International Medical Graduates (IMGs) who obtain training in the U.S. in J-1 status. The Conrad Waiver program provides an option...
The USCIS has announced an increase in the allowable period of admission for foreign nationals using the Trade-NAFTA (TN) status. This status is available only to Canadian and Mexican citizens. The TN status was previously issued in one-year increments, with no limit on the number...
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Service Center Operations / ISD Committee (SCOPS) recently released answers to questions posed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) service centers. These questions were from a meeting on August 20, 2008. Some of the questions addressed the "sunset"...
The U.S. Department of State (DOS) has announced that it will accept 2010 Diversity Visa (DV) Lottery applications from 12:00 noon Eastern Daylight Time on October 2, 2008 to 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time on December 1, 2008. The only way to apply is through...
Immigration laws contain protections against employer retaliation and termination in situations where an employee has disclosed violations of the labor condition application (LCA) requirements or cooperated with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in investigations of such violations. The LCA is part of the H1B...
MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers were provided with information on the National Interest Waiver (NIW) option for international medical graduates (IMGs) in our August 29, 2008 article, NIW for Physicians Completing J-1 Waiver Service. In contrast, the labor certification-based permanent residence (green card) option for IMGs...
The California Service Center (CSC) of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) held a liaison meeting with representatives of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) on August 6, 2008. During the meeting, the CSC addressed several questions of general importance submitted by AILA members....
