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The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration on Aug. 06 announced a 12-month extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of Somalia until Sept. 17, 2005. Under this extension, those who have already been granted TPS are eligible to live and work in the United States for an additional year and continue to maintain their status.
In an effort to improve customer support and save millions ofdollars, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)began on Aug. 4 authorizing examiners to issue Employment AuthorizationDocuments (EADs) for periods of more than one year.
EADs areused for a variety of purposes, but one of the major uses is to provideinterim work authorization for people waiting on permanent residencyadjustment of status applications, which can take several years tocomplete. It is not unusual for applicants to have to renew the oneyear document several times.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS, announced Aug. 2 it was changing the photo requirements for all visa applicants to the United States. Whereas previously, applicants were required to submit photos of themselves from a three-quarters tilted position, applicants are now required to submit photos of themselves from a full-frontal position where they are looking directly toward the camera.
The change went into effect Aug. 2, 2004.
USCIS said it would accept three-quarter and full-frontal photographs until Sept. 1, 2004, after which time it would only accept full-frontal photographs.
In an effort to safeguard the U.S. and its airspace, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of State on Aug. 2 suspended two programs that allow certain international air passengers to travel through the United States for transit purposes without first obtaining a visa.
The programs, known as the Transit Without Visa program (TWOV) and the International-to-International transit program (ITI), were suspended as of Saturday, Aug. 2, 2003. This action does not affect U.S. citizens or citizens from visa waiver countries.
New UK naturalization regulations were announced by the IND yesterday that require all applicants for naturalization, including those who are married to British citizens, to have a sufficient level of English language skills and to provide evidence that they meet this language requirement.
Applicants can show that they meet this requirement in one of two ways, by either:
As per our earlier news report on FLR (IED) application processing times, the Home Office has released their weekly update on the queue for Leave to Remain (LTR), work permit and Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) applications.
The Home Office aims to publish information about the cases currently under consideration on a regular, weekly basis.
Currently, of those Leave to Remain (LTR) applications that were sent to ATOS Cannock before 15 July 2004, the ones that were received on 25 May are now being processed.