The audio for this podcast can be downloaded at

http://www.immigrationfridays.com/podcasts/09142007.mp3  

00:02 Announcer: Welcome to Immigration Fridays, your source of up-to-date immigration information brought to you every Friday, from Miami, Florida by the Immigration Law Offices of David J. Hart, P.A.

00:23 Announcer: Today is September 14, 2007 and this week's topic, The Visa Bulletin for October 2007. Here is David Hart.

00:32 David Hart: Welcome back everyone to our immigration podcast known as Immigration Fridays. My name is David Hart. I'm an immigration attorney with you as usual from our studio, our offices in Miami, Florida. Today is September 14, 2007. And our topic is the October 2007 visa bulletin, which was published a few days ago. As you probably know, the visa bulletin is the government publication that comes out every month that gives us the cutoff dates for the various categories in the family, immigration, as well as employment based immigration. And the reason we wanted to discuss this today and the reason it is significant is October is the start of the fiscal year and we were hoping that with the opening of the availability of the new fiscal years quota let us say of available visas that we would see some movement. In this podcast, I wanted to go over specifically the numbers and the dates for the employment based categories since a lot of the activity over the summer as you probably recall with the opening of the bulletin for July that was published in June, and then on July 2^nd they published a revised bulletin that closed all of the categories, and then on July 17, they reopened it for 30 days until August 17. It has been indicated that about 300,000 adjustment of status applications have been filed.

02:22 David Hart: So the bulletin for October basically the good news is really for the first preference category which is the multinational workers, extraordinary ability aliens, and that sort of things. Those were all current, in other words even a petition that was filed today, let us say in extraordinary ability classification, you could file your adjustment of status. The other one that is open is second preference which is advance degrees and that is open for all of the countries except for China and India. China is backlog until January 1, 2006 and India is backlog until April 1, 2004.The I would say the most popular preference category is the third which is reserved for skilled workers and professionals, so your engineers, your specialty cooks, all of those fall into the third classification. That was really the section that we were all interested in and there has not been a lot of movement unfortunately. All areas with the exception of China, India, Mexico and the Philippines are for August 1, 2002. So cases that was filed prior to August 1, 2002 as of October 1, 2007 can be processed, in other words they will accept those filings for the adjustment of status. For example, China is September 1, 2001; India is April 22, 2001, Mexico is April 22, 2001, and the Philippines is the same as every other country which is the 1^st of August 2002. So those were the calculations. Other than that, you would have fourth preference which is religious workers and fifth preference which is the targeted employment investor visa. They are all current, in other words, there are no backlogs. So really what these means in terms  of the cases that perhaps were not filed perhaps the labor certs haven’t been approved but for those people who fall within those dates, you can file your petition as of October 1. Now let us talk a little bit about at least from our perspective our experience with the multiple filings that went on during July and August. In our cases, we have not received any receipts yet; none have been issued or at least mailed out to us. We have one case that we know the checks were cashed and we are hoping that those receipts are in place. When I say receipts as most of you know when you submit your application for adjustment of status let us say with a work permit, you would be issued a receipt for your I-485 that is the application for adjustment of status, and then you would be issued a separate receipt for your I-765, which is your application for a work permit or employment authorization. Because of the deluge of applications, we were warned by the CIS that there would be significant delays in the issuance of these receipts and these receipts can be significant because it proves that your case is in the process which means it is adjustment of status then you have lawful status and also you could for example use that receipt to go and renew your driver’s license. But in the absence of that, all you have basically is your FedEx receipt if you have one with a copy or attaching that FedEx air bill for example or the printout showing that the delivery date from the post office or FedEx or DHL, you would then be in the position to prove and hopefully demonstrate that your case was filed and that you are here subject to that application. I have not had any experience yet where an immigration inspector or an officer stops someone and is making an issue with the fact that let us say if your H1 expired two months ago and then you filed your adjustment of status application on August 5, obviously we are September 14 so it is about 40 days or so hence but still no receipts. We do have a couple of cases; 1: And adjustment of status, a multinational with an approved petition. We followed the adjustment in March and those cases were approved actually yesterday which in the scheme of things is pretty quick from March to September for an adjustment of status. It is somewhat unusual but if you take the overall picture, I believe what is happening is that because of this let us say onslaught of cases that were filed, I think the officers were trying to clear their previous cases and allocate those visa numbers and hence we are seeing these approvals coming through.

08:21 David Hart: We also have another case that was the third preference case that was approved after a very short period of time and that had been filed in I believe it was July. And so we are at the point now we are waiting to see and we will report back to you on our postings on the website www.immigrateusa.com but we are waiting to see exactly when these receipts start coming and then of course after that when will they issue the appointments for biometrics, when will travel documents be approved and sent out, when will work permits or the employment authorization documents be approved and sent out, and then we will see how many cases get RFE’s, how many cases perhaps were transferred for final interviews. I believe it is going to be slow going but the good news is and this is what anyone who is in the process needs to remember that there was that window of opportunity for many many people that opened up and now that you are in adjustment of status, you should certainly maintain your employment authorization by renewing your employment authorization or renewing your travel documents because that is clearly what will permit you to stay in the country.

09:36 David Hart: One final point before we finish in that regard, we definitely recommend to those who qualify but if you have an underlying nonimmigrant status like an H or L or O or E visa that you renew it. And the reason we basically recommend that is in the unlikely event hopefully that there is a problem with your adjustment of status, if you do not have an underlying nonimmigrant status that is still valid, if your adjustment of status was denied, you would be in unlawful status or illegal and then clearly you would have to leave the country pending the outcome of an appeal or a motion to reopen. I don’t think anyone’s interest from a family or business basis but in any event, it is something to think about and that is what we recommend to all our clients or people that we are assisting.

10:44 David Hart: I'm trying to answer all my emails in a timely manner. Don’t hesitate to send me your questions or comments or if you have heard anything about receipts being issued or approvals, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can always reach us by telephone 305-577-9977 but we will see how this goes. Any interesting information that is relevant to all of you, we will try and post on our website on a timely basis. In the meantime, I wish you a safe weekend and we will be back with another edition of Immigration Fridays next weeks. Have a good day.

11:41 Announcer: I would like to provide you with our contact information so that you can send in your questions, stories and situations. We will try to answer your questions and maybe even interview you on a future program.  You can leave a message at 305-577-9977.  From overseas, the code for the U.S. is 01 or toll free in the US and Canada at 1-800-344-4278. Leave a message for Immigration Fridays or email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also find us at www.immigrateusa.com.