On March 11, 2019, the U.S Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will implement a new I-539 Application to Change or Extend Non-Immigrant status. Starting the same day, only this edition of the I-539 form will be accepted by DHS. Be careful when filing an I-539 that will be received by DHS on or after March 11,…
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On January 24th, 2019, the USCIS Chicago Asylum Office shared statistics about their processing times of asylum applicants from October 1, 2018 through December 31st, 2018 in a joint meeting with the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). During this time, 1,197 asylum cases were adjudicated and 116 were un-adjudicated, while over 22,000 applications remain pending.…
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Beginning August 9, 2018, international students and some other nonimmigrants (J, M) will start the countdown towards the 3-year and 10-year bar towards re-admission to the U.S. Prior to August 9, 2018, certain nonimmigrants who were admitted to the United States for a period of “Duration of Status” (D/S) did not have to worry about…
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Despite the Trump administration’s failure to secure funding for a United States border wall, an “invisible wall” of new USCIS policies has resulted in unprecedented delays for those seeking legal immigration to the country. On January 30th, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) reported that the USCIS “net backlog” had bloated to over 2.3 million delayed…
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Announcement from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website: WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced [January 28, 2019,] that applicants who have a pending affirmative asylum application with USCIS can now check the status of their applications online at uscis.gov/casestatus. Only asylum applicants with an application pending with USCIS will be able…
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