In a ruling today the Arizona US District Court ruled that key parts of the Arizona immigration law are unconstitutional.  Specifically, the parts that allow the police to stop and check people for their papers, that make it illegal to not have papers, or not carry your papers, and that make it illegal to search for work if you do not have papers.  The other parts where not enjoined with this ruling.  For more information see: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/28/arizona.immigration.law/index.html?hpt=T1

For August 2010, the visa bulletin is moving the priority dates for the EB2 category for both India and China to March of 2006.  This is a jump of about 5 months and signifies that there are more immigrant visas left in the fiscal year (which ends on September 30, 2010) than the Department of State thought there would be.

According to the Department of State these dates should remain the same through the end of this fiscal year.  This does bode well that there will be more moves forward next fiscal year, which starts on October 1, 2010.

For those who are looking to get into H status on or after October 1, 2010, there is good news. There are still plenty of H-1B slots open in the 2011 cap (which begins October 1 of this year and runs through September 30 of 2011).

So far, only about 24,400 of the 65,000 slots for the regular cap have been used and about 10,400 of the Master's cap slots have been used (out of 20,000). Please call us with any questions about these numbers or the process for applying for an H-1b.

We have noticed in the last several weeks that the premium processing unit at USCIS has gone back to its old standby of sending out boilerplate RFE's for EB-1A (Extraordinary Ability) applications instead of actually reading the files and making sane decisions.  Because of this, at this point we are advising clients not to use this service for the EB-1A applications unless they absolutely have to.  We will update on this situation once we learn more.

Those interested in the subject can read a Washington Post article on the issue by following the below link.  Arizona passed a law forcing its local police officers to enforce federal immigration laws, among other things.  The full story is available at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/06/AR2010070601928.html