Author: Jeff MacArthur

H-1B season is once again upon us! H-1B petitions for the U.S. government’s 2016 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, 2015, should be filed by April 1, 2015. For fiscal year 2015, USCIS received approximately 172,500 cap-subject petitions. USCIS anticipates the volume of H cap petitions for fiscal year 2016 to be just as high, […]

United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has now fully implemented its program to automate Form I-94 at all air and sea ports. CBP now also provides a foreign national’s arrival and departure records for the past five years. It’s important to note that the system is passport driven. Consequently, every passport number used by […]

The Vermont Service Center has informed the public that it is currently experiencing issues with its biometric scheduling system. This has resulted in a temporary halt in sending biometric notices in all cases at the Vermont Service Center, with the exception of temporary protected status related cases. The glitch affects cases filed in December 2014 […]

The Department of Labor has recently released Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) statistics from fiscal year 2014. PERM certification verifies to USCIS that there are no available U.S. workers for a U.S. job position. To learn more about PERM certification, please click here. Here are some of the most noteworthy statistics: • For the Fiscal […]

Last week, USCIS issued a notice detailing the next steps of the Executive Actions on Immigration. USCIS is responsible for implementing these initiatives as soon as possible. Some initiatives will be implemented over the next several months and some will take longer. Over the coming months, USCIS will produce detailed explanations, instructions, and forms as […]

If you are a Canadian citizen applying for a nonimmigrant waiver for entry into the United States, one of the documents required for submission is a RCMP record. RCMP stands for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which is the national police force in Canada. A RCMP record is a certified criminal record listing any […]

Visa applicants can be found inadmissible to the United States due to physical or mental disorders with associated harmful behavior to themselves, others, or property. Alcohol abuse is considered to be one such mental disorder. However, the abuse does not need to rise to the level of addiction or alcoholism. A person is considered to […]

The National Visa Center, or NVC, previously only handled inquiries in regards to immigrant visas, for example employment- or marriage-based green card applications. However, beginning on Jan. 12, 2015, the NVC also became the domestic point of contact for nonimmigrant visa cases such as a visitor visa (B-1/B-2) or intra-company transferee visa (L). The NVC […]

Many people who have been convicted of crimes in the past are ultimately granted a “pardon,” “discharge” or other forms of record-expungement by their government. Accordingly, these individuals are often under the impression that these mechanisms “wipe their record clean.” For U.S. immigration purposes, however, this is not the case. Under U.S. immigration regulations, judicial expungements […]

  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced that it is considering a “Known Employer” pilot program in order to aid in U.S.-Canada business travel. The program would streamline adjudication of certain types of employment-based immigration benefit requests filed by eligible U.S. employers. The program will be designed to: • Make adjudications more efficient […]