US Immigration News

Thanks to an increase in U.S. Embassy visa officials in Brazil and China from last November, the U.S. has reported faster processing times. Also, following U.S. President Obama's announcement on 19 January regarding the importance of tourism, the country has also seen an increase in the numbers of Chinese and Brazilian tourists visiting the US.

According to new statistics from the US government, 16,000 more Chinese immigrants came to the US in 2011 than in 2010. US Citizenship and Immigration Services data show that the US granted green cards to more than 1.06 million immigrants in 2011, out of which 87,000 were Chinese. As with the previous year, the largest number of immigrants came from Mexico, China and India. Chinese immigration to the US represented the greatest increase.

The US Department of Homeland Security is currently investigating Infosys, an Indian global technology services company, for "errors in a significant percentage" of US visa applications submitted by the company.

US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that, as of 13 April 2012, it has already received 20,600 H-1B cap-subject petitions. Additionally, they have received 9,700 H-1B visa petitions for foreigners with US advanced degrees.

The US State Department announced on 15 April that they are increasing the validity of B-1 and B-2 visit visas for Colombians traveling on a temporary basis to the US from five years to ten years. Under these new rules, most Colombian applicants who qualify for a B-1 or B-2 non-immigrant visa will be issued a 120-month, multiple-entry visa.

As expected, the US Department of State (DOS) has confirmed that employment based EB2 visas priority date have retrogressed and moved back to 15 August 2007, from May 01, 2010 for Indian and Chinese nationals.The DOS will not issue any new visas to applicants from these areas with priority dates after 15 August 2007. Visa applications received after this date will have to wait for the cut off date to become current. This also means that processing of visas could now take years longer for Indian and Chinese applicants.