Dear Readers:
This week we report on several important immigration news items. The INS has released statistics on usage of H-1B visas halfway through the current government fiscal year. Not surprisingly given the cooler US economy, the number of H-1B visas issued is down from the last few years. But even at a slower pace of issuance, visas are still being granted at a rate far in excess of the 65,000 limit on H-1B visas that will become law again next year. Unless Congress intervenes to raise the number of H-1Bs again, in just a few short months we could be facing H-1B backlogs again. Expect to see backlogs by late next year forming in all employment-based green card categories as well.
This week also marks the official end of the selection process for the DV-2003 green card lottery. The State Department has announced the final results of the latest DV drawing. We report the complete results this week and compare the numbers to last year’s lottery.
This week the House Judiciary Committee approved a measure that would increase the Conrad 20 program for physician waivers to 30 physicians per state. The bill still needs to be voted on by the entire House of Representatives and then the Senate needs to pass its own bill. We also report on the week’s other Capitol Hill developments in our regular Legislative Update column.
In addition to our regular columns, this week’s ABCs of Immigration column is part two of a special article written by SSHD’s New York and North Carolina office attorneys Cynthia Ryan and Kristi Crawford. And we have a guest article by Gary Endelman on national security issues and immigration.
We want to let our readers in Argentina know that Gilda Bollwerk and I will be returning to Buenos Aires from July 6th to July 12th and will be presenting a free seminar on US immigration law as well as offering consultations each day. For more information, go to http://visalaw.wpengine.com/ar/ .
We appreciate hearing from hundreds of you every week who have questions or are interested in hiring our law firm to handle your immigration work. We want to remind you of the various ways you can communicate with us:
– telephone or in person consultation (go to http://visalaw.wpengine.com/intake.html or call 800-748-3819 or 901-737-3194 and ask for my assistant for scheduling)
– online individual chats (go to http://visalaw.wpengine.com/chatlive.htm)
– weekly group chats at Monster.com
– email at gsiskind@visalaw.com
Many people also do not realize that our law firm is typically capable of handling immigration matters anywhere in North America so please don’t assume that just because we don’t have an office in your home town we can’t handle your work.
Hope you have a great weekend,
Greg Siskind
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.