BREAKING IMMIGRATION NEWS FROM DAVID WARE & ASSOCIATES
July 2, 2007
VISA BULLETIN RETRACTED! UNPRECEDENTED MOVE BY DOS
This morning, the Department of State (DOS) issued the following notice (at http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin_3263.html):
Visa Bulletin
Number 108
Volume IX
Washington, D.C.
UPDATE ON JULY VISA AVAILABILITY
The sudden backlog reduction efforts by Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices during the past month have resulted in the use of almost 60,000 Employment numbers. As a result of this unexpected action it has been necessary to make immediate adjustments to several previously announced cut-off dates. All Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices have been notified of the following:
Effective Monday July 2, 2007 there will be no further authorizations in response to requests for Employment-based preference cases. All numbers available to these categories under the FY-2007 annual numerical limitation have been made available.
Employment preference numbers will once again be available to these chargeability areas beginning October 1, 2007, under the FY-2008 annual numerical limitation.
Department of State Publication 9514
CA/VO: July 2, 2007
This is an unprecedented action by the Department of State. USCIS has just announced, on its web site at www.uscis.gov, that it will begin rejecting the adjustment applications that we worked furiously to prepare on Friday and Saturday and that were received by USCIS on Saturday and today.
Since employment-based visas will not be available again until October 2007, it will not be possible to file an adjustment of status application requesting an employment-based visa until October 1 (assuming we can rely on DOS not to change course again). We expect the visa bulletin to be issued in mid-September 2007, and until then we won’t know what the cut-off dates will be for the various categories. In other words, we won’t know until September how much of a delay persons hoping to file adjustment of status applications will face. Persons who are currently preparing to file adjustment of status applications may want to proceed and be ready to file on October 1 if the visa bulletin allows.
Our office will continue to move adjustment applications toward completion in anticipation that we will be able to file them on October 1, except that we will not encourage the scheduling of medical exams for those who have not yet taken that step.
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