The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has announced that, except for cases being reviewed as potential duplicate filings, all receipts have been issued for cases selected in the random lottery. The California and Vermont Service Centers finished entering data on all selected cases by May 23, 2008, and mailed all receipts by May 24, 2008.

The U.S. Department of State (DOS) released its July 2008 Visa Bulletin.  According to the bulletin, employment-based category three (EB-3) for professionals and skilled workers will become 'unavailable' in July.  To view the entire visa bulletin, please go to the Processing Times link on our home page at www.bashyamspiro.com.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released a report with projected times for naturalization processing at USCIS local offices around the country.  These processing times provide a sense of how quickly a case may be processed if there are no complicating factors.  To view the report, please go to THIS LINK.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it would allow F-1 students who are the beneficiaries of selected H-1B petitions for fiscal year (FY) 2009 to request a change of status in lieu of consular notification.

The short-term measure follows an April 8, 2008 interim final rule that, among other actions, automatically extends the F-1 status of qualifying students who are the beneficiaries of approved H-1B petitions to cover the gap between the expiration of a student’s F-1 status and the H-1B employment start date of October 1. To obtain the automatic extension, a student must be the beneficiary of an H-1B petition filed for the next fiscal year (with an October 1 employment start date) and have requested a change of status. For F-1 student beneficiaries of petitions that USCIS subsequently rejects, denies, or revokes, or for those who violate their status, the automatic extension terminates at that time.

Since the rule was published after the filing period had closed for new FY 2009 H-1B petitions, many petitioners of F-1 students did not include a request for a change of status with the H-1B petition. Instead, petitioners requested consular notification based on the assumption that these students would have been required to leave the United States to obtain an H-1B visa at a consular office abroad.

USCIS has determined that it will allow petitioners of F-1 students whose H-1B petitions were randomly selected to receive an H-1B visa number for FY2009 following the closure of the filing period, to now request a change of status on behalf of qualified beneficiaries, if such requests are received within 30 days of the issuance of the receipt notice.

To request a change of status in lieu of consular notification, petitioners (or authorized representatives) must send an email with the request to the USCIS service center where their petition is pending within 30 days of the issuance of the receipt notice. Special email addresses for each service center have been established specifically for this purpose. These addresses are listed below and are posted on the USCIS website. Petitioners should email their requests for change of status in lieu of consular notification upon receipt of the notice so the agency has the request before completing H-1B petition adjudication. The requests should include the receipt number and both the petitioner’s and beneficiary’s name, date of birth, I-94 (Arrival/Departure Record) number, and Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) number.  

Email addresses for requesting change of status can be found at THIS LINK.

As additional information becomes available, we will post it at www.bashyamspiro.com. 

Our office has begun receiving receipt notices and approvals for premium processing 'regular-cap' and 'advanced-degree' H1B cases filed for Fiscal Year 2009.  If you have yet to hear anything or receive a receipt notice from USCIS, one tip would be to check with your bank to see if the check for USCIS filing fees has been cashed.  If it has, that is an indication that USCIS has selected your case for adjudication.

For cases that were filed under the regular H-1B cap, we would like to remind everyone that USCIS has stated that it will issue receipt notices by June 2, 2008.  If you have not received a receipt notice yet, that does not automatically mean that your case has not been selected for review.  We expect that USCIS will begin issuing receipt notices (or rejections) for regular-cap H1B applications throughout the month of May.

As additional information becomes available, we will post it at www.bashyamspiro.com. 

On April 14, 2008, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) conducted its computer-generated random selection processes to select which H-1B petitions for fiscal year 2009 (FY 2009) would be adjudicated.  

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today a preliminary number of nearly 163,000 H-1B petitions received during the filing period ending on April 7, 2008.  More than 31,200 of those petitions were for the advanced degree category. 

USCIS expects that next week it will conduct the computer-generated random selection process, beginning with the selection of the 20,000 petitions under the advanced degree exemption.  Those petitions not selected under the advanced degree category will join the random selection process for the cap-subject 65,000 limit.   

USCIS will reject, and return filing fees for all cap-subject petitions not randomly selected, unless found to be a duplicate.   

We will provide additional updates at www.bashyamspiro.com when they become available.