Category: Status & Protections

  • Read this Travel Ban Explainer by Immigration Monitor (a credible guide to global immigration). This lists countries with full and partial travel bans that affect various kinds of immigration and non-immigration visas – and the rationale for restricting travel and visas from these countries. Some exceptions make be available for some people with these reasons:…

  • Here’s an AI summary of the Border Act of 2024. The Border Act of 2024 (S. 4361), negotiated by Senators James Lankford (R-OK), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), was a proposed bipartisan bill that aimed to significantly reform the U.S. immigration and asylum systems. It was not enacted into law, as it failed to pass…

  • A recent NPR podcast shares these statistics about U.S. doctors: So far, the U.S. government has not agreed to waive the new $100,000 application fee for new H1B visas for doctors. Listen (4 minutes) or read here.

  • The U.S. government expects to issue over 500,000 H2A (temporary unskilled agricultural) visas this year which is a 119,000 increase over the 420,000 annual average. The administration has lowered the state-specific wage rate for H2A visa-holders and has allowed growers to charge workers for housing (when in the past the government required that the grower…

  • The Dallas Express explains vetting deficiencies for Afghan nationals coming to the U.S. during Operation Allies Welcome after evacuating Afghanistan in 2021. Read the article here.

  • USAFacts provides this overview of how long it takes to become a US citizen based on different visa categories.

  • During his keynote address at a recent gala to raise money for Immigration Law and Justice of New York, Austin Kocher (a professor at Syracuse University) cites these 7 key statistics which tell the story of US immigration currently:

  • The National Immigration Forum has provided this explainer for the new $100,000 fee for new applications for H1B visas. In general, the fee applies to applicants living outside of the US and does not apply to re-newals. This explainer provides clarification on Project Firewall from the U.S. Department of Labor which is meant to protect…

  • National Immigration Forum provides this explainer for the H-!B proposed rule which replaces the lottery system with the weighted selection lottery. This would give a higher weight (and probability of selection) to jobs that pay more.

  • One of the unintended consequences of reducing the international student populations in the U.S. is the lack of funding for university STEM research and classroom teaching which is described in this article “A flood of Chinese graduate students in STEM was a boon to U.S. students“