everyone this is a two-in-one special we're doing a breaking news
regarding USCIS cancellation of bridge the gap memo as well as a change of
status success story because it's very much related you'll see how complicated
it used to be and how easy it is now i'm going to explain how do you change your
status and how do you do it effectively and what USCIS is looking for let's get to it
hi everyone this is Joseph i'm the managing partner here at Tsang & Associates where we
solve legal problems with creative solutions now changing your status to an international student
f-1 visa it sounds easy it should be easy but it is reality one of the most difficult things and
i do a lot of difficult cases this one is up there now let me explain why the form itself filling out
a 539 either online or on paper is relatively simple but there's all these things that come
with it that makes it highly highly complex let's list a few the first thing is if you check the
wrong box your entire application can be denied right so that's one thing now that applies to
most cases but especially for something like this because there's a lot of things that's confusing
about the form second thing the adjudication process for changing the status is actually a
long time in years past filing a change of status might only take two months to three months that's
very reasonable let's say you're a tourist and you fall in love with the us and you want to stay here
and you want to study a little bit maybe you want to study jewelry or art or dance or fashion design
there's so many opportunities here and so you you apply to a school they give you an i-20 you
fill out the 539 application and you and you wait two three months goes by it gets approved and you
start school that's relatively straightforward and that's how it's supposed to be but in the
past few years and it's not just because of coving the adjudicating time for a change of status can
exceed seven to eight months so picture this you come into the us your status is about to
expire in February and in January and you decide you want to go to school so a school accepts you
and the start date is in march while you file the change of status and it doesn't get adjudicated
until October right august or October by then your school already started you're out of status sorry
your case gets denied you got to go home right so the adjudicating time is that long now let's say
you're sophisticated you consult an attorney and you know that the adjudicating time is that long
so you apply for a change of status and you find a school that starts in November well
now there's this entire period that you're waiting and then November starts right so it
takes your your case gets approved in October and then suddenly November starts well what if
your approval date is in august now there's suddenly a gap right a multiple month gap
well then you're supposed to file a second 539 change of status to bridge the gap that's a
legal technicality you're supposed to be in legal standing in order to change to a different status
so if there's a gap well sorry you have no legal standing it's kind of like a diving board you
don't you don't have anything to stand on to jump to change so therefore your case will be denied
and that's the new memo that's the breaking news for the longest time people had to file two
applications some people don't know about it some people know about it but they didn't put
two filing fees one officer gets one application and another officer didn't know that the second
officer got the application and the case gets denied so there's all these inconsistencies and
complications let me show you how it works in real life and i'll walk you through step by step i'll
take a current case that we have and we just got an approval on and i'll share that with you so you
can see how it works now this case was approved prior to this memo being released so we're
super happy because it's super complicated but you'll see how much simpler it would be had this
memo came out a year ago or two years ago right so we have an l1 and l2 client they
are managers of an international corporation but they no longer want to continue their job
and they want to be a student so this was around October of last year now the complicated thing
is if they want to be a student and if a school gives them an i-20 it might they might only give
them a start date at 20 maybe around January if they file their change of status in October
well if it takes seven to eight months in order for them to to start school in January they'll
miss the start date and they can't start school until their case gets approved so what do they do
so what we did was we changed from their l1 l2 status to a b1 b2 status meaning a torah status
in lieu of an f1 and f-2 now they go from l-1 and l-2 to a tourist in order for them to seek
out a proper school for them to go to school and they apply in the process of applying
if there's there's a gap in the period then we file a second 539 so in in essence because there's
a family of four we file like 16 different 539s it's a lot of paperwork we have to document in
each one of these applications how they did not violate any of their status what their intent is
how much savings they have in order for them to change to the appropriate visa category it's a
lot had this memo been out back then we could have simply changed l1 l2 directly to an f1 visa you
might be asking well that doesn't really solve the problem you mentioned earlier right if they are
executive managers here now in October but school start date is January and then their approval date
is in October that's a long time this you're still mixed missing class but you could file
first and say if you missed class if you missed the first i20 you can provide a second i-20 and
USCIS tend to give and request for evidence oh you missed class now provide a second i-20 and then
maybe by September or October time you provide the second i-20 then it gets approved then you
go right so all you have to do is just coordinate with the school so you can time the i-20 correctly
in the past if your case gets approved and there's more than 30-day gap between your start date then
you need to file a second set of 539 application to fill in that gap now you no longer need it once
your case gets approved even if it's 60 days 90 days 120 days it's okay you're in lawful status
here you just can't work illegally that's the thing that they focus on so that's the big update
for this cancellation of the bridge the gap memo in the memo it says this will significantly reduce
work for both the applicants as well as for the government and reduce cost you don't know how
much cost this is reducing for so many people you know it's a huge deal for the government when they
cancel application fees because everywhere else they're increasing it right so some application
fees are a thousand two hundred dollars now it's two thousand five hundred dollars and that's per
person we have a whole family it might be like five thousand ten thousand dollars and
in this case they're just completely canceling out you don't need to file a second application
we're just gonna review it it makes good sense it's efficient it's clear it saves a lot of
work for everyone i love it i love it i love it love it i love how things are more efficient now
i think it's a lot more clear if you have any questions about this process you want to reach
out feel free to let me know would love to jump on a call and talk about it alright take care bye