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July 5, 2007
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Several top immigration attorneys around the country are seeing red after the US State Department set off a visa gold rush for employment-based visas but later announced all visas were finished.
The U.S. State Department in June announced that employment based visas would be "current" as of July 1, 2007. According to prominent Los Angeles immigration attorney Carl Shusterman, thousands of applicants filed for employment based immigration benefits, some of them after having waited five years or more for backlogs to clear.
But all for naught, Shusterman said. As of Monday, July 2, the State Department had posted a small press release its website announcing that employment based numbers were not current after all.
This after the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services processed 60,000 employment based visa applications in 30 days were all used up. "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," the State Department said in its July Bulletin.
"US immigration law limits the number of employment- based immigrant visas that may be issued each fiscal year" the USCIS said in a statement. “As a result of this unexpected action it has been necessary to make immediate adjustments to several previously announced cut-off dates.”
The next filing period is October 1, 2007, but Shusterman said there are bound to be backlogs and that it is anyone's guess when employment based visa applications will next be current.
"We're right back to square one, with scientists, engineers, teachers, and healthcare workers having to wait in endless lines for employment based visas," he observes.
Meanwhile, Shusterman says they all applications sent in by July 1 will be sent back to the applicants, despite whatever effort or cost they put into it.
"Apparently, it was two federal agencies playing a game of yes, we have no bananas," he notes. "It's disappointing."
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