News Update - July 13, 2007More News on the Employment Based Visa Number EmbroglioThe Immigration Daily today quotes Attorney Jay Solomon's report on his web site that a knowledgeable official in the Department of State confirmed that U.S.C.I.S. was requesting visa numbers on July 1st and July 2nd, and that visa numbers were still being issued as late as the morning of July 2nd; that close to 30,000 visa numbers were requested and issued in July through the morning of July 2nd. Mr. Solomon believed that many if not most of the requests made in the first two days of July were for applicants whose priority dates were not current in June. He further questions the actual usage of visa numbers by the U.S.C.I.S.. The above is a further indication of the frantic and apparently illegal actions of U.S.C.I.S. to protect its fee hike coming into effect on July 30th, but too late to prevent loss of hundreds of millions of dollars by applicants who could have filed I-485 applications in July under the earlier Department of State visa bulletin which opened employment based categories one through three (EB-1through EB-3). What can be done to remedy the situation other than by lawsuit? If the agencies can be persuaded to relent by public and congressional pressure and the constant shining light of publicity, appropriate beginning curative actions would be to reopen the employment based classes and to delay U.S.C.I.S. fee hikes until the visa bulletin reverts to the earlier July chart EB dates and applicants are given a reasonable period of time (30 days) to submit I-485 applications under the current fees.
† 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.
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Copyright © 2003-2012 Alan Lee,
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