Hi Everyone – Apologies for not updating you earlier. I wanted to let you know about several developments.

  1. The government was given until 5 PM Pacific time to submit a reply to our motion for a Temporary Restraining Order. They met that deadline and included a declaration from Charlie Oppenheim from the Department of State. They largely focused on stating that they erred in the original bulletin and are permitted to correct their mistakes. Also, the government argued that the issuance of the Visa Bulletin early is a “courtesy” and that while the government is “sympathetic” to people who spent money, no one really suffered because these are costs that would have been spent anyway. The government also argued that if the plaintiffs prevailed, they would be unable to correct even minor typographical errors in the future. And there is a strong public interest in favor of the government here because ruling against them would force the agency to violate INA Section 245(a). You can find the government’s response to the TRO request here. Charles Oppenheim’s declaration can be found here.
  2. We do not have a date for a TRO hearing. It is likely to be early in the week though there are a variety of scenarios that could affect this so stay tuned.
  3. We have set up a Facebook page to post information about the case including news article links, links to documents to request inclusion as a class plaintiff and more.
  4. There has been a considerable amount of media coverage about the lawsuit and the impact of the State Department/USCIS decision on the Visa Bulletin. This includes articles in the New York Times, Bloomberg BNA, Law360, the Associated Press. We’ll be linking them on the Facebook page shortly.
  5. We have created a crowdfunding page to raise money to cover our costs in case we can’t recover EAJA fees. We think if everyone contributes a little bit, then this won’t be that difficult to fund. Look for information on our Facebook page shortly.
  6. We have posted on Twitter a number of requests for types of people affected by the Visa Bulletin mess. To see the tweets, please click here.

 

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