Government Shutdown: As many of you know government shutdown ended on October 17. Congress decided to push out the issues about government budget and debt ceiling till Jan 2014 and Feb 2014. Republican leader said that they would not longer decide to shutdown the government to remove funding from the health care law which was passed few years ago.
All government agencies are now currently open and functioning as usual (though there could be a delay due to backlog). Many agencies including USCIS has provided relief to applicants who may have been affected by the government shutdown.
USCIS: If an H-1B, H-2A, or H-2B petitioner submits evidence establishing that the primary reason for failing to timely file an extension of stay or change of status request was due to the government shutdown, USCIS will consider the government shutdown as an extraordinary circumstance and excuse the late filing, if the petitioner meets all other applicable requirements.
Processing Time: USCIS has updated their monthly processing times for all applications currently pending at USCIS as of 08/31/2013. For I-485 application, the average processing time is 4 months. However each individual case can be faster or slower (due to many factors involved).
Congress In Recess: Both House and Senate are currently in recess till Oct 28. Recess is when Congress members go back to their districts and meet with their constituents to discuss new matters and which bills to create.
Immigration Courts: These are currently open during regular business hours. Both detained and non-detained cases will be heard as scheduled. If additional schedule changes are necessary, the immigration court with administrative control over the case will notify the parties to the case. Immigration courts will provide new notices of hearing for all non-detained cases that were not heard due to the lapse in government funding.
The Board of Immigration Appeals has returned to normal operations. Guidance regarding filings that were due during the lapse in government funding will be available in the near future.
The Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer has returned to normal operations.
Immigration Reform: President Obama has said that once the government budget and debt ceiling has been taken care of, he would start pushing for comprehensive immigration reform. For latest immigration news (updated every 15 minutes), please see link: http://www.mygcvisa.com/news/
gradually the updates in this blog are becoming more and more irrelevant.
ReplyDeletePeople can be so rude...if you find any of this irrelevant go and pay $$$$ to an attorney.
DeleteAnonymous - The readers of this blog is vary varied (FB, EB, DACA, DV, etc). Hence not all posts would be relevant to you specifically.
DeleteIf there is something specific you are looking for, let us know. We are always open to feedback. Actually the whole site is based on feedback from readers like you.
Anonymous sounds like a beggar asking for chump change. A kind soul gives him a full meal, and the beggar complains because it is not something he wanted.
DeleteAnonymous,
DeleteNobody's forcing you to read it. Go to the USCIS site and keep pressing F5 for the rest of your life.
LOL!!!
DeleteDear Amazon: Once again I want to express how thankful I am for all that you do for each one of us. I cannot tell you how helpful, encouraging and informative you have been. I also wanted to ask you to try to put aside any negativity that you may find in other comments. People are ignorant and unappreciative. However, the majority of us knows appreciates all that you do. On the other hand, any estimates on when USCIS will publish the pending inventory?
ReplyDeleteHi Carmen, it is nice to hear from you. Thank you for the kind words. Maybe I should start deleting comments which are simply trolling.
DeleteThe I-485 pending inventory should be out around October 30. There is a good chance that the data in it would be 30-45 days old. Though it would give a much better estimate for EB3 ROW and EB2 India.
But you gotta admit, it's nice to laugh at these hating trolls. But yeah, if you want the blog to sound as professional as possible, then I guess you will have to delete them so we can all stick to the issues at hand.
Delete