Adjustment of Status Applications Halted by U.S. Department of State

Monday, July 2nd, the Department of State announced that all available employment-based immigrant visas had been allocated for fiscal year 2007. As a result, USCIS announced that it would not accept any adjustment of status applications filed for July 2007 in any of the employment-based preference categories.

The reason for this sudden change in the July Visa Bulletin is that USCIS reportedly approved 66,000 adjustment of status applications during the last two weeks of June. These 66,000 approvals, together with the 60,000 other cases USCIS had approved during the period from October 1, 2006 to June of 2007, and the immigrant visa cases U.S. embassies around the world have been approving during this fiscal year, serve to use up the 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas available for use during each USCIS/DOS fiscal year.

In light of the above, employers can continue to file Immigrant Petitions (Form I-140) on behalf of employees, but employees cannot file I-485 adjustment of status applications until at least October 1, 2007, when USCIS's new fiscal year begins. It is likely there will still be backlogs at that time.

If you have further questions, please contact a Hodgson Russ attorney.

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