US Immigration News

The so called 'Gang of Eight' has released details of the draft immigration reform bill it has been working on since January. The Gang of Eight are eight senators, four Democrat and four Republican, who have agreed to cooperate to draft a compromise bill which will reform the US immigration system which politicians on both sides agree is 'broken'.

A summary of the bill was released on Tuesday 16th April 2013. Last week, two of the Gang, Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Lindsay Graham had indicated that a deal might be close.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of facebook, has announced that he and other tech industry bosses have founded Fwd.us, a group which will lobby for reform of the US immigration and education systems. It has appointed advisors from both the Republican and the Democratic parties and will aim to be politically neutral. The group includes numerous well-known Silicon Valley figures including Marissa Meyer of Yahoo and Eric Schmidt of Google.

Mr Zuckerberg wrote an opinion piece which appeared in The Washington Post on Thursday April 11th 2013 in which he calls for

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it has held a lottery to decide which H-1B applications for the 2014 fiscal year will be approved.

Each year, the US issues 65,000 visas to foreign skilled workers to work in the US in 'a specialty occupation'. The workers should have a degree though an applicant with a range of training and experience amounting to 'degree equivalence' may qualify

Thousands of people demonstrated in Washington D.C. on Wednesday 10th April 2013, in favour of immigration reform. There were smaller, co-ordinated demonstrations in cities across the US.

400 coaches brought protestors to Washington where they protested near the White House. Reporters say that the mood of the crowd was optimistic because progress has been made on proposed immigration reform and a draft Act of Congress is expected to be revealed shortly laying out the details of the reform which could transform the US immigration system.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released its March bulletin setting out the 'cut-off priority dates' of the green cards being processed in April 2013. The bulletin shows that there are long waiting times in many immigration categories.

Informing the public of cut-off priority dates is USCIS's somewhat confusing way of letting people who have made their applications for US permanent resident status know how long they will have to wait before they can finally get their 'green card' or permanent resident visa.

Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the so-called 'Gang of Eight' Republican and Democrat senators who are working on a comprehensive US immigration reform bill has said there is 'substantive agreement' on the principles of the bill. Speaking on 1st April 2013, Senator Schumer added 'It's not a done deal. We have to draft the legislation. We have to have the group of eight sign off on the specific language but we have substantive agreement on all major issues between the eight of us now'.