Now that President Obama just signed the Stimulus Bill into law yesterday, all the discussions and arguments over the legislation process shall now settle down and we need to concentrate on how to digest and implement the law from this point on.
Yu, South & Associates reminds its clients that, as announced previously by the USCIS, the non-minister special immigrant religious worker program is scheduled to sunset on March 6, 2009. Individuals applying under the non-minister category of the program, including family members, must either adjust status to permanent resident or be admitted with an immigrant visa before March 6, 2009.
U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Marietta) has introduced HR 878, named the Nuclear Family Priority Act. It is meant to limit so-called "chain migration," where extended families of legal immigrants are given priority for receiving visas.
Department of Homeland Security's Deputy Secretary, Paul A. Schneider, signed and issued on Dec. 18, 2008 a notice designating a new list of countries that are eligible for H-2B program participation. According to this notice that was published on the Federal Register on Dec. 19, 2008 in Vol. 73, No. 245, only the nationals from the following 28 countries are eligible to participate in the H-2B visa program:
Visa denials by US Consulates overseas have always been determined as "nonreviewable" under the previous laws and regulations. That was true until recently. In the latest case: American Sociiological Association v. Chertoff (Civil Action No. 07-11796-GAO), United States District in Mass. made a decision in which US District Judge George A. O'Toole, Jr. ruled such a "nonreviewability" has an exception if consititutional rights of citizens within the United States have been affected when judicial reviews are permitted. The purpose of the judicial review in such situations would be to determine whether a visa application was denied on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reasons.
