With the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (“IIRIRA”) and the re-election of American President Bill Clinton, the attention of immigration advocates is now focused on two main areas – how the new law will actually be implemented and what is the future of immigration legislative activity as we head into the new year. In this month’s “Legislative Update” article, we’ll give you our take on what’s ahead.
The rules for the next green card lottery have been announced by the US Department of State. The entry period for the DV-98 visa program is 3 February 1997 to 5 March 1997. The rules are very similar to the DV-97 program held earlier this year except that Polish nationals are now excluded in addition to all the same countries as were previously excluded.
We’ll provide a very brief overview in this issue for those who did not see our special issue on DV-98 released in November or who have not visited the SSHC DV-98 Green Card Lottery Information Center at www.visalaw.com.
In this issue, we also report on the latest news in immigration law and procedure and, as always, include our regular features including government processing times, “From Our Canadian Office,”, Visa Spotlight, Consular Focus as well as a special guest column on tax planning for immigrants.
Finally, we’re pleased to announce that Siskind, Susser, Haas & Chang has again expanded. We’ve recently added offices in Northern and Southern California. Later this month, we’ll be releasing an announcement on our other new office addition in the New York City area. The firm now has nine immigration lawyers practicing out of our six main offices.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is provided as a public service and not intended to establish an attorney client relationship. Any reliance on information contained herein is taken at your own risk. The information provided in this article has not been updated since its original posting and you should not rely on it until you consult counsel to determine if the content is still valid. We keep older articles online because it helps in the understanding of the development of immigration law.