What Immigration Agency Really Needs the Shutdown to End?
As the government shutdown continues—with no signs of ending soon—you might be wonder what impact the shutdown will have on your petition or application. Let’s look at how the shutdown affects or may affect some immigration-related government agencies. USCIS The lapse in funding does not affect USCIS’s fee-funded activities, you may hear. This means that […]
The Power of Stories When Filing with USCIS
Stories essentially govern the way we think. Keeping this in mind when filing a petition or application with USCIS is important. As humans, we will abandon evidence for a good story. Don’t believe it? Let’s look at some studies. STUDY #1 An interesting example comes from a study involving medicine. In this study, […]
Why Inattentional Blindness May Kill Your Immigration Dreams
In yesterday’s blog post, we looked at the story behind a December 20, 2018 Board of Immigration Appeals decision. The decision involved a Venezuelan couple who, according to an immigration judge, committed a willful misrepresentation of a material fact. Due to the misrepresentation, the couple was due to be deported. The couple appealed the […]
Why “Presumption of Knowledge” Should Change the Way You Think of Signing Immigration Forms
A married Venezuelan couple–we’ll call them Jacobo and Lucía–gained admission into to the US in March 1993, as non-immigrant visitors. They could remain in the US till September 1993. In December 1997, St. Mark Catholic Church filed a visa petition that sought to classify Jacobo as a special immigrant religious worker. Along with the petition, […]
What the Beatles Could Learn About USCIS Service Center Filing Tips
The Beatles’ “Let It Be” is a fantastic song. If you call the lyrics a melodic masterpiece, you’ll hear no objection from us. If you call the cooing that backs McCartney’s lead vocal “heavenly,” again no objection. If you call Ringo’s drumming somehow simultaneously soothing and invigorating, you’ll still get no push-back from this blog. […]
The Brief Guide to the National Interest Waiver (NIW) Standard
In December 2016, USCIS unveiled a standard for adjudicating EB-2 national interest waiver cases. A decision by USCIS’ Administrative Appeals Office Matter of Dhanasar established a new test for deciding whether a foreign national seeking permanent residence through the EB-2 category may receive a national interest waiver. The waiver discards the need to satisfy the […]
Why Mom Was Right About Filing at USCIS Lockboxes—5 Tips
Ok, your mother may never have given you tips specifically about filing at USCIS lockbox facilities. But guidance that mothers do often give to their school-aged children is applicable when filing at a USCIS lockbox facility. Perhaps your mom told you that small, visual, surface-level things matter; or, maybe she just said brush your teeth, comb […]
Can You Cheat the USCIS Background Checks and Get Away with It?
In the preceding blog post, we wrote about the subject of background checks—background checks that sometimes raise the temperature of USCIS interview rooms. This blog post will illustrate the background checks in action. In 2017, the Administrative Appeals Office examined the case of an Australian–we’ll call her “Kim”–living in the United States. Kim wanted to […]
How Background Checks Make the USCIS Interview Room a Nerve-Raking Place
You probably already know that the FBI does background checks on applications and petitions filed with USCIS. But, you may not know all or even some of the other checks performed by USCIS–though your application or petition may get to know them. We won’t look at every background check here; let’s look at a few. Petitions may be checked against […]
ICE Memo Explains Why You Should Really Avoid Being Shuffled into Deportation Proceedings
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo from August 2017 shows restrictions on ICE attorneys that make it more difficult for those attorneys to grant reprieves for certain immigrants facing deportation, and orders the review and potentially the reopening of deportation cases that were “closed.” ICE principal legal adviser Tracy Short authored the memo, which […]