Changes are coming for employers – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is set to publish a new Form I-9 on August 1, 2023. USCIS has also introduced new procedures that will allow certain employers to remotely verify employees’ identification and employment authorization documents.
Author: Kiratpreet (Kirat) K. Sandhu
O-1A Status: An Extraordinary Alternative to Consider at the Close of a Disappointing H-1B Season
This year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services reports that it selected 110,791 H-1B beneficiaries in the lottery —25,791 more than the cap. Because the number of eligible H-1B beneficiaries is substantially larger than the H-1B cap, even foreign nationals eligible for approval of an H-1B petition had a slim chance of being selected in this year’s lottery. Petitioners for those beneficiaries who were unsuccessful in the FY2024 H-1B lottery may consider applying for O-1A status.
USCIS Announces Expansion of Premium Processing
While U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) made clear that it would not be increasing the $2,500 premium processing fee in its latest round of proposed fee increases, the agency announced on January 12 its final phase of premium processing expansion for EB-1 and EB-2 Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers.
Beginning January 30, 2023, USCIS will accept Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service for all EB-1 multinational executive and manager petitions and all EB-2 national interest waiver (NIW) petitions. Notably, unlike previous phases of premium processing expansion, this phase applies to all petitions, both new (initial) and previously filed (pending) under the EB-1 multinational executive and manager petitions and all EB-2 NIW categories.
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USCIS Proposes Rule to Increase Certain Immigration Fees
Earlier this month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, proposing to increase the filing fees for certain immigration and naturalization benefit requests, with employment-based petitions undoubtedly seeing the greatest increase across the board.
USCIS hosted a public engagement session on the proposed fee rule on January 11, in which Director Ur M. Jaddou emphasized that fees have remained unchanged since 2016 and cited several reasons for the fee increases: covering higher costs due to inflation, avoiding any future backlogs, improving the use of technology, improving customer service, and reducing processing time. She further noted that USCIS is making a conscious decision to limit the naturalization application fee increase to less than 5% in an ongoing effort to encourage legal permanent residents to pursue naturalization and that USCIS intends to expand fee waiver categories. The proposed rule would generate an additional $1.9 billion in fee-based revenue per year for USCIS, with the intended net result of minimally increasing fees for approximately one million filers each year. However, for employers who routinely sponsor nonimmigrant and immigrant workers, the increased fees pose a significant cost.
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