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If you, or if your employee or client meets employment-based green card eligibility requirements, this is the year to file.  In a normal calendar year, there are 140,000 of these green cards available to companies that permanently employ foreign nationals.  This year, starting October 1, 2021, there will be over 290,000 available. Why is this […]

This is the second year the H-1B lottery has been conducted as a two-step process, with an initial electronic registration and subsequent selection and invitation to submit completed petitions.  On March 30th 2021, USCIS conducted the first lottery, selecting 87,500 registrations to fill 85,000 H-1B visa slots.  Applicants in the first round had until June […]

In a normal year, there are 140,000 Employment-Based Green Cards available.  However, 2020 was not a normal year and over 150,000 relatives of US citizens and green card holders were unable to immigrate because US Embassies abroad were closed due to the pandemic.  Ever year, there is a 226,000 family-based green card quota.  If this […]

If your H-1B application for FY2021 was rejected, you may get a second chance to file.  USCIS is now accepting petitions from last year that were rejected because the start date was LATER THAN October 1, 2020.  Why is USCIS doing this?  Last year, under the new two-step application process and the general uncertainties of […]

According to Forbes, about two-thirds of annual H-1B cap-subject visas are awarded to beneficiaries in computer occupations.  As of June 2021, there were over 1 million computer positions actively vacant.  However, H-1B applicants working as computer programmers have been hit the hardest by specialty occupation issues in their petitions. A few years back, a H-1B […]

Brilliant, highly skilled professionals often take non-traditional pathways through education combining work experience with formal training.  Sometimes all of the education takes place on the job.  The question is, how do you explain this to USCIS in your H-1B visa petition? The answer is that you must show the US academic value of the work […]

A successful visa petition takes a team effort.  The beneficiary, the employer, and the immigration lawyer all have important rules to play.  Who is the team member that gets often overlooked but performs many of the vital roles?  The paralegal. The bones of a successful petition are ensuring the required forms are submitted in order […]

At CCI TheDegreePeople.com we work with difficult RFEs every year.  These are RFEs that call more than one aspect of the petition into question.  On the simple end, it is wage level and specialty occupation rolled into one complicated issue.  On the other end is the Nightmare RFE that is nearly impossible to answer by […]

If your H-1B petition wasn’t selected for FY2021, you may have another shot.  On June 23, 2021, USCIS announced that it will allow resubmission of certain cap-subject FY2021 petitions before October 1, 2021.  USCIS stated, “If your FY2021 petition was rejected or administratively closed solely because your petition was based on a registration submitted during […]