October 2009 visa bulletin – the first for FY 2010 – was released today by the Department of State. Employment-Based Second Preference EB-2 China advanced only two months to March 22, 2005, while India inched ahead to January 22, 2005. Although dissappointing, we still may see quite a few I-485 approvals for applicants with a … Read more
The Internet has become an integral part of many people’s lives. If there is a survey about the most useful inventions in technology, internet should be right up there with PC, telephone and even electricity. However, if there is one thing on the internet that bugs everyone, it has to be spam. The Associated Press … Read more
Google released another cool feature today which takes advantage of its gold mine – gigantic volume of search data – to track “domestic trends.” Available on Google Finance, the tool contains 23 indexes to cover major sectors of the economy, such as retail, car buying, jobs, and travel. I downloaded the job search data and … Read more
You just got off the plane after a 15-hour flight from Asia, waited another hour for your luggage to finally pop out, and walked seemlingly a mile to get to the exit. Then you see the all-too-familiar scene: hundreds of people lined up to go through customs and immigration inspection. But you are probably too … Read more
September is the last month of Fiscal Year 2009 and there are two substantial movements in term of visa cut-off dates: China EB2 and India EB2 will both advance to January 8, 2005; and All EB4 categories have become unavailable, starting immediately. Employment Based Second Preference India EB2 cutoff date is moving to January 8, … Read more
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently placed a purchase order of $3.1 million for additional green cards. According to LaserCard, recipient of the order, these permanent resident cards are to be delivered by December 31, 2009. I don’t know exactly how much it costs to produce a piece of green card, but 3 … Read more
Update 11/11/2009: USCIS did release pending I-485 data, but in a pdf document. We have turned it into an immigration tracker. Check it out! USCIS is getting ready to launch its immigration tracker, maybe as soon as late September! Aneesh Chopra, the first U.S. chief technology officer, mentioned it during a speech in Silicon Valley … Read more
Question: What exactly is wrong with imigration? Answer: Letter ‘m’ is missing. Ok, it doesn’t solve all the immigration problems this country is facing, but at least we are one step closer. For some reason I feel that writing this post makes the world a better place than a full day debate on Capitol Hill … Read more
The State of California quietly passed a bill (ACR 42) last week to officially apologize to Chinese-Americans for discriminatory laws and provisions which resulted in the persecution of Chinese immigrants living in California in the 19th and 20th centuries. The racist laws, enacted as far back as the Gold Rush, barred Chinese from voting, owning … Read more
INS will never die, or so it appears. Why? Six years after INS – Immigration and Naturalization Service – ceased to exist, the term “INS” is being searched 4 million times around the globe on Google, in a single month. As a comparison, only 1 million for its successor, USCIS. I’m not sure if the … Read more
