U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on April 6, that it had received enough H-1B petitions to reach the congressionally-mandated cap of 65,000 and the U.S. advanced degree exemption, known as the master’s cap, of 20,000 for fiscal year (FY) 2019. In order to select enough H-1B petitions to meet the cap, USCIS used a computer-generated random selection process. During the filing period, which began April 2, USCIS received 190,098 H-1B petitions, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption. According to its recently released breakdown data, USCIS received 95,885 advanced-degree H-1B cap submissions and 94,213 regular H-1B cap submissions during the FY 20

A federal judge has ruled the President Trump’s administration must continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which gives thousands of young undocumented people permission to live and work in the United States. President Trump tried to cancel the program last year, however, on April 24, 2018, Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the President’s efforts to cancel the program were based on “virtually unexplained” claims. The judge claimed that if the administration cannot better explain its reasoning, it must continue to accept both new and renewal DACA applications. The Trump administration has 90 days to respond. It’s the thir

On April 10, a new Presidential Proclamation (P.P.) was issued which amended P.P. 9645 of September 24, 2017. The new P.P. removed the visa restrictions imposed on nationals of Chad, which came into effect on April 13, 2018. As a result of the April 10 Proclamation, nationals of seven countries are currently subject to various travel restrictions contained in the Proclamation, as outlined in the following table, subject to exceptions and waivers set forth in the Proclamation. In accordance with P.P. 9645, for nationals of the seven (7) designated countries, a consular officer will determine whether an applicant otherwise eligible for a visa is exempt from the Proclamation or, if not, may be

According to an analysis of government data obtained by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) for 2017-2018, more H-1B visas are going to U.S. technology companies, reflecting the strong demand for high-skilled talent in the U.S. economy, and fewer visas are being used by Indian-based companies, which continues a recent trend. NFAP said that the new USCIS data appeared to undermine the argument that the federal government should impose new restrictions on H-1B visas and keep the visas at a low annual limit of 85,000 for companies, which equals only 0.05% of the U.S. labor force of 160 million. H-1B temporary visas are important as they are typically the only practical way a high

On April 17, 2018, USCIS updated its policy on the acceptance of DNA evidence supporting sibling relationships. The policy permits officers to suggest and consider direct sibling-to-sibling DNA test results, and provides standards for evaluating DNA results for full siblings and half siblings. When USCIS determines that primary evidence is unavailable or unreliable, it may suggest and accept DNA test results as evidence of a full-sibling or half-sibling relationship in any petition or application for an immigration benefit in which a sibling relationship is required to establish eligibility or may otherwise be relevant to an eligibility determination. USCIS does not currently have regulatory