US Mayors call for a stop to ICE raids and for immigration reform - Monday, July 21st, 2008

The U.S. Conference of Mayors held its annual meeting in Miami, Florida last month and passed this resolution, calling for comprehensive immigration reform which promotes the renunification of families, provides legal status with a path to earned citizenship, and a plan for current and future immigrant workers.

H-2B Count Update - Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

On July 7, 2008 USCIS updated the count of H-2B petitions received and counted towards the H-2B cap. As of July 7, 2008, 20,390 petitions have been counted towards the 33,000 cap for the first half of FY 2009.

August Visa Bulletin released - Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

The U.S. Department of State has published the Visa Bulletin for August 2008. There has been little or no movement for most categories, with the exception of EB-2, India and China categories, which have moved forward from April to June 2006!

New Citizenship Exam to take effect this October - Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

The new exam will take effect this October, however those that file for citizenship prior to October, 2008 will have the choice between the current and the new exam.

Some believe that this new exam is more difficult. Could you pass? MSBC has put together a multiple choice questionaire. Click here to test your knowledge. Note however, that natauralization applicants are not given multiple choices in the naturalization interview.

FOIA Online Status Check Now Available - Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has launched an online service to provide customers a quick way to check the status of requests they have made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Customers will need to enter their assigned control number in order to receive an immediate online response on the status of their FOIA request. The response provided will be either "pending" and the position of the customer's request or "processed" with a listed processing date.

Link to the FOIA status check page, and the USCIS Update. (.pdf, 28.2KB)