Green Card Drive

Here is a road sign you don’t see everyday: Green Card Dr. I took the picture on a beautiful July 4th afternoon. You can see blue sky and palm trees in the background, traffic lights that happened to be green at the time, and a gas station located conveniently nearby. What a fitting image for … Read more

New Green Card, RFID, and Security Concerns

The new green card comes with a bunch of enhanced features. Although most of them are designed for security purposes, the implementation of RFID – Radio Frequency IDentification – is rather for improving efficiency. In fact, if anything, RFID might have undercut an otherwise more secure green card.

With RFID embedded in the new green card, a CBP officer is now able to read your card while you are still standing in line at the airport. This, hopefully, can get you through a port of entry a bit faster. But the problem is, anyone with a sophisticated reader can read the same information as well, all from a distance without you even knowing it.

Before you push the panic button, however,

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Do you Trust the Pending I-485 Inventory?

Ever since USCIS started releasing the pending I-485 inventory data last September, there has been skepticism all over the Internet. Some, including immigration attorneys, have gone as far as claiming the data being close to useless.

Well, I think that is too far.

Sure, the data is incomplete. But it is something we never had before. Prior to September of 2009, if you had a pending I-485, all you knew was that you were standing in line waiting for the next visa bulletin. Now, with the inventory, you can find out approximately how many people are actually ahead of you. Even if USCIS doesn’t count all the pending cases, you now have a general idea of how long the line is, and more importantly, what position you are in.

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Do I Have to Carry My Green Card Around?

Do I have to carry my green card with me?”
Many people ask this question after becoming a permanent resident. The official answer is: Yes, you do. In fact, Form I-797 that came with your fresh new green card says:

When you receive your card you must carry it with you at all times if you are 18 or older. It is the law.

So there you go. The perfect answer.

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November 2009 Visa Bulletin

Apparently USCIS requested tons of visa numbers in October, and the State Department decided to leave EB cutoff dates nearly unchanged for November. The receipt of demand from Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices has far exceeded their earlier indications of cases eligible for immediate processing. As a result, it has been necessary to hold most … Read more