July Visa Bulletin

There are many who are still trying to figure out what to do about the fact that the U.S. Department of State (DOS) raised their hopes and then both the DOS and the USCIS dashed those hopes by announcing the "unavailability" of visa numbers and rejection of I-485s in July 2007. There is much concern over whether the unavailability of visa numbers by the USCIS issuing approvals is valid or illegal, since there are many irregularities in the procedures that were followed. Our firm has become aware of older I-485s (filed well before June / July 2007) that were approved in error in June and at the very beginning of July, when there were no visa numbers available for those applicants in either month! Another problem likely to be mentioned in the lawsuit is that the USCIS counted, or allocated, a visa number for those I-485s that were pending security checks for several months, or years, without issuing the I-485 approvals! This also violates the law and regulations, as visa numbers are not supposed to be "reserved" for cases. They are to be assigned with a case approval.

Copyright © 2007, MURTHY LAW FIRM. All Rights Reserved

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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

July Visa Bulletin