US Immigration News

New EU member states will not enjoy visa-free travel to the USA anytime soon unlike the "old" EU member states. Of the 15 current members, only Greek citizens must apply for a visa to travel to the US. On the other side of the continent, only Slovenia meets the criteria for visa-free travel to the USA out of the new member states.

Furthermore, the accession countries will not be able to invoke a law that would require support from other EU member states on the issue.

From 30 April 2004, the fees for the visa category applications below willincrease, as listed below:

More people travelling to the United States as visitors will be subjected to systematic fingerprinting and getting their photograph taken in the wake of tougher new border control laws. These rules will come into effect in September and will apply to visitors from 27 countries, most of which have close ties to the US.

Currently the majority of these countries are part of the visa-waiver scheme and their nationals are considered non-visa nationals. This means that nationals of most of these countries do not require any type of visa to enter the US for less than 90 days at a time.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced today that this year's congressionally mandated H-1B cap of 65,000 applications has been reached. The USCIS will no longer be accepting any new applications for H1-B visas for the purpose of first-time employment in the United States.

New procedures have been announced by USCIS for the remainder of fiscal year 2004 (1 October 2003 - 30 September 2004), as follows:

Based upon first quarter INS figures released on the number of H-1B applications, the number of H-1B approvals and applications still awaiting a decision total over 43,000. This means that by mid- February of this year, the H-1B cap of 43,500 applications will be reached and no new applications can be approved in this fiscal year (01 October 2003 to 30 September 2004).

Full details of the US Green Card Lottery DV 2005 have just beenannounced. The Lottery is designed to increase the diversity ofimmigrants to the US by only allowing entrants for the Lottery from"natives" of "under represented" Countries. Your Country of birthwill normally be the deciding factor whenconsidering which Country you will be a native of.