News Update - April 10, 2007

By Alan Lee, Esq.

H-1B Submissions Surpass The 65, 000 CAP- USCIS to Conduct Computer Generated Random Lottery

On April 5, 2007, the USCIS announced a preliminary number of filings and that the tallying of H-1B petitions received April 2nd and 3rd was underway. USCIS announced on April 3rd, that it had received enough petitions to meet the 65,000 cap for fiscal year 2008 and that it would conduct a computer-generated random selection of the cap-subject submissions filed on April 2 and April 3, 2007 to determine which cases USCIS will accept for processing. An earlier USCIS memorandum stated that those cases not selected for processing will be rejected and returned along with the filing fee.

USCIS Extends Validity of I-693 Medical Certifications

The USCIS has temporarily extended to January 1, 2008, its policy, first set in a memorandum dated January 11, 2006, that extends the validity of the civil surgeon endorsement on Form I-693 for cases in which a visa petition and an adjustment of status application were filed together at the same time. Normally the validity of a medical is one year. Under the policy, form I-693 will remain valid until adjudication of the adjustment application. This policy is limited to applications where no disqualifying Class A or Class B medical condition was certified.


The author is a 26+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

This article © 2007 Alan Lee, Esq.

 

Copyright © 2003-2012 Alan Lee, Esq.
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