H1B Visa Lawyer Blog

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Wishing you happiness! – Helen Keller

Happy Holidays, from our family to yours!

The MVP Law Group

U.S. Department of State announced on December 13, 2012, an agreement with Canada for limited Visa and Immigration Information sharing. The Information sharing agreement will be for third country nationals applying for a visa or claiming asylum. Neither country will share any data about their own citizens.

This sharing agreement will increase the amount of information used by immigration and refugee protection officers and will help them to make better informed decisions. Under this agreement biographic immigration information sharing will start in 2013 and biometric sharing will start in 2014.

Source of Information: “U.S. Dept. of State PRESS Release, Washington, DC (12/14/2012)“

New fee allows USCIS to recover the costs of processing immigrant visas after individuals receive their visa packages from the Department of State abroad

WASHINGTON-On Feb. 1, 2013,U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin collecting a new USCIS Immigrant Fee of $165 from foreign nationals seeking permanent residence in the United States. This new fee was established in USCIS’s final rule adjusting fees for immigration applications and petitions announced on Sept. 24, 2010.

USCIS has worked closely with the Department of State (DOS) to implement the new fee which allows USCIS to recover the costs of processing immigrant visas in the United States after immigrant visa holders receive their visa packages from DOS. This includes staff time to handle, file and maintain the immigrant visa package, and the cost of producing and delivering the permanent resident card. The implementation of this new fee is further detailed in a Federal Register notice scheduled for publication tomorrow.

A past applications-adjudicator for the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has been indicted by a Bay Area grand jury on nine criminal counts stemming from his alleged role in a marriage fraud scheme.

Andrew Chojecki, 61, a naturalized U.S. citizen who most recently resided in Poland, is charged in an indictment handed down Dec. 6 with conspiracy to commit marriage and visa fraud, marriage fraud, and alien harboring. The charges are the result of a two-year probe by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and its partner agencies on the San Francisco Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force, including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s Fraud Detection and National Security Unit.

Six additional defendants are accused of conspiring with Chojecki to commit the fraud. They are; Beata Szkop, Malgorzata Zuk, Aaron Goldsmith, Pawel Karolak, Vito Scherma and Hector Vargas. The latter four defendants are also charged with alien harboring.