Immigration Lawyer Blog
The Department of State released the lasted visa bulletin for October 2011 on September 9, 2011.
For the month of September 2011, the EB-1 category was still current for nationals all over the world. In EB-2 category, the cut-off dates moves forward from April 15, 2007 to July 15, 2007 both for Chinese Mainland nationals and Indian nationals. In the EB-3 category, the cut-off dates moved forward from July 15, 2004 to August 8,2004 for Chinese Mainland nationals and moved forward from July 8, 2002 to July 15, 2002 for Indian nationals.
For the recently popular EB-5 investment immigration, although applicants are getting more and more, the visa number now is still current.
It is imperative that you consult with a highly trained legal professional, particularly since USCIS has become stricter with EB-1 applications after a memo was released on August 18, 2010. In essence, the USCIS memo breaks the EB-1 evaluation process up into two parts:
1) Evaluating whether the applicant meets the baseline criteria for the immigration category and
2) determining whether the applicant’s evidence demonstrates the required high level of expertise for the immigration category. In the second part of the review process the USCIS will evaluate the evidence to see if, as a whole, it proves by a preponderance of the evidence that the applicant is at the very top of his or her field of endeavour.