Month: March 2024

USCIS’ new fees, forms and filing locations will be effective starting on Monday, April 1, 2024. On March 29, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado denied the Plaintiffs’ request to stop the new fees from going into effect, stating that the Plaintiffs’ failed to meet their burden of proof. (Moody, et. al. v. Mayorkas, et al. (Case No. 1:24-cv-00762, 3/19/24)).

The H-1B Cap Registration period closed on Monday, March 25, 2024, at 12 noon ET. USCIS has announced that it has run the lottery and notifications are being sent to myUSCIS accounts and will continue to be sent for the next few days. USCIS will make an official announcement once all the selection notices have been sent. Those that have been selected in the initial round of selections will have until June 30, 2024, to file their H-1B petitions. USCIS will then evaluate whether another round of selections will be made depending on how many of the 85,000 (65,000 for the Bachelor’s Cap and 20,000 for the U.S. Advanced Degree Cap) H-1B visas have been used. It seems like USCIS is taking a bit longer to send out all the selection notices this year, likely because of enhanced system checks for duplicate beneficiary registrations.

On March 19, 2024, the American Immigrant Investor Alliance, IT Service Alliance, and an EB-5 investor filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado challenging the legality of the new USCIS final fee rule, scheduled to take effect on April 1, 2024.  (Moody, et al. v. Mayorkas, et al., 3/19/24).  The District Court of Colorado may issue an order this week that stops the new fee rule from going into effect on April 1, 2024.  If so, USCIS would likely continue to accept the current filing fees and forms until the Court decides on the legality of the new fee rule.  Stay tuned, it’s going to be an exciting week!   

Due to technical issues and glitches with the online H-1B Cap Registration system, USCIS has extended the deadline for H-1B Cap Registration to Monday, March 25, 2024, at 12 noon ET. Once the registration period ends, USCIS will run the lottery and notify the winners that they have been selected to proceed with filing an H-1B petition by June 30, 2024. Good luck to all registrants!

If you thought USCIS was catching up with the 21^st century, think again! USCIS recently issued updated guidance regarding the signature requirement for the USCIS fillable version of the Form I-9. Even though the Form I-9 is an electronic fillable form, USCIS has clarified that employers/employees must still print and manually sign the form rather than typing or electronically signing signatures. Thus, employers and employees using the fillable version of the Form I-9 may electronically type answers directly into the form, except for the signature blocks. Any I-9s that have been completed with an electronic signature are noncompliant and need to be corrected. For more info, see this link.

The H-1B cap lottery opened on March 6, with USCIS rolling out new technological updates and company-centric “organizational accounts,” allowing employers to link multiple members of their organization to the account for the H-1B registration process. Despite these updates, there have been bumps with the lottery process, including employer and company signatures not showing up on the registration summaries, despite the parties having signed as directed. Additionally, there have been reports of 404 error messages resulting from reverting Form G-28 and USCIS between the employer and the legal representative, as well as payment problems with registration. USCIS appears to have resolved the technical glitches at this time; here’s hoping the remainder of the lottery period will go smoothly!

As a reminder, the H-1B lottery will close on March 22 at 12 pm EST.  Please schedule a consultation with Curray York & Associates if you have questions about H-1Bs!

The Senate is hurrying to pass a set of six government funding bills before the shutdown deadline looms at the end of Friday March 8th. While there’s confidence that a shutdown won’t occur, securing unanimous agreement among all 100 senators on a voting schedule is still crucial. Once the Senate greenlights the funding bills, they’ll head to President Joe Biden for his signature, after having been approved by the House on Wednesday. Lawmakers are grappling with two impending shutdown deadlines, one on Friday March 8th and another on March 22nd.

If government agencies close for budgetary reasons, all but “essential” personnel are furloughed and are not allowed to work. Below is a brief summary of how U.S. immigration agencies have operated during prior shutdowns.

• U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS): Nearly three in four DHS employees – more than 185,000 people – would be required to continue working through a shutdown, without receiving a paycheck. Those working without pay include law enforcement officers, analysts, investigators, and disaster response officials conducting work such as border security and deportation and removal operations. DHS provided the following information regarding what would happen during a government shutdown.
• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS): USCIS is a fee-funded agency so if the government shuts down, USCIS typically continues to operate per normal with the exception of any programs that receive appropriated funds such as the E-Verify program.
• U.S. Department of State (DOS): Visa and passport operations are fee-funded and thus are not normally impacted by a shutdown. However, consular operations can be impacted if there are insufficient fees to support operations at a particular post. In this case, posts will generally only handle diplomatic visas and emergencies.
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP): CBP personnel are considered “essential.” Ports of entry will be open, and processing of passengers will continue; however, processing of applications filed at the border may be impacted.
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): ICE enforcement and removal operations continue during a shutdown, although ICE attorneys generally focus on the detained docket. The ICE Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) offices are unaffected since SEVP is funded by fees.
• Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR): Immigration court cases on the detained docket will proceed during a lapse in congressional appropriations while non-detained docket cases will be reset for a later date when funding resumes.
• U.S. Department of Labor (DOL): The DOL would stop processing all applications in the event of a government shutdown, and personnel would not be available to respond to e-mail or other inquiries. Web-based systems, such as FLAG and PERM, would be inaccessible, and BALCA dockets will be placed on hold.