I am attorney Desiree Koger Gustafson with Immigration for Couples. We regularly come
on and do these weekly chats to discuss new um updates with in the immigration world as well
as comments or questions that we are hearing from people throughout our consultations or even our
Facebook page so if you are new to our page and didn't understand why we would be coming live
that is why we regularly do this on Thursdays and 11 hour time Eastern Standard Time and
um so if you are watching us live and have a question or a comment feel free to put that
into the comment section and I will get to that if I can today if not or if it's a more lengthy
um or a common question that we are hearing I will come on and do another live video just like that
um just like this on that issue in particular so today, I'd like to discuss USCIS updates.
We've had two of them recently that would impact our world, the world of mostly
fiancé spousal visas naturalizations holistic services for our clients and their families
and that being the first one that's the kind of the biggest is that the USCIS has dropped their
COVID-19 emergency policies and this will impact us the most with regard to telephonic interviews.
They are now or have been in the past always requiring people to be present for interviews,
attorneys included. If you wanted to serve as attorney representing that client or that
particular family, we have been able to, throughout COVID, provide that service via
telephone. This may be something that are not as readily available to do or allowing
that remains to be seen but that's probably the avenue that we're going to see the most
with regard to this new kind of dropping of that emergency protocol.
Obviously, some things might look different as well around the offices if you're attending
interviews and such. Just know that all of those kind of grace periods and those things should be
coming to an end due to that new recent update. The second one that I thought I'd go through
today is the expiration or the removal of the 60-day requirement for civil surgeons reports.
As you may be aware, anyone who files for an adjustment of status so this would be
somebody who has means to do so whether it's a familial-based application but you're applying
for that green card to adjusting your status to a green card holder or legal permanent residence,
you have to undergo a medical exam. Sometimes, that medical exam is waived if you've had one
you came here via fiancé visa is the most common we see and so you've had a medical exam at in
that foreign country you do not need to do another medical exam here in the US but usually it used to
be a decade ago I've been practicing immigration law for more than a decade at this point about
15 years and it used to be that you would have the medical exam you would get that last and you would
send that in with the application because that medical exam could not be dated more than 60 days.
A lot happened in that period of time. We had medical exams be lost, we saw the adjudication
times just balloon and that caused some of those medical exams when you submitted them with the
application that caused them to then expire before the application was adjudicated and you'd have to
go through the process of getting another medical exam. Lots of things were put into place now.
This really won't impact us a whole lot because we do not provide them normally with our initial
applications, we'll provide them later to ensure that they do not get lost or
hopefully ensure they don't get lost. But just know that now, they've removed that
60-day requirement so those are our USCIS updates for this week obviously you can check out a lot
more of our videos tons of videos on immigration processes even some specifics at www.immigration
for couples.com if you click on that resources tab it will have a lot of different resources
for you in videos as to what could possibly be your next step or your question that
um that you are thinking of so thanks so much for watching today we will come back to you
live next Thursday as well feel free to like and share our page if you know of somebody who may
um be of interest or may have a similar question or be in that situation
um they would find some resources with our page as well if you're watching this on replay
you can comment hashtag replay and put your question in the the comment section and we
will get to that as well in a different live broadcast we will see you next week