Did you know that since the beginning of the year, the Immigration Service USCIS has approved less
than 17,900 Adjustment of Status applications for green card? In this video, we're going to cover
some of the statistics and some predictions as to what's going to happen in the next few months with
USCIS adjudication. We're also going to talk about a new policy that is going to increase the amount
of cases that will be approved by immigration in the next few months. The big change that is being
implemented in the past few weeks. And finally, I'm going to talk about the recent flexibilities
when it comes to responding to requests for evidence, requests for motions to reopen,
and a few other things that you need to know. So you never miss any deadline
when it comes to filing with USCIS. So what are you waiting for? I'll see you on the other side.
Hello, everybody and welcome back to our immigration channel. This is a place we
get the most up to date, immigration news, immigration updates, and everything else
that you need to make your immigration journey less stressful. My name is Jacob Sapochnick.
And I am an immigration attorney. I help clients in all 50 states. In this video,
I want to share with you some very interesting statistics that may help you understand where
are we heading when it comes to processing your applications inside the United States.
Whether it's an adjustment of status, based on a family petition, or based on employment. Some
of the numbers I'm going to share with you are quite surprising, gives us an indication
as to what's going to come in the next few months. So recently the USCIS released its second-quarter
processing report of its cases. I130s, Adjustment of Status. And what's interesting is that
so far, quarter two of the year, they process about 45,000 Adjustment of Status cases,
both for employment and family petitions. Now remember that the quota for the year is about
260,000 cases, so they have a really long way to go before they hit their quota. Now let's look at
that slide that is on the screen right now. As you can see what's highlighted in yellow, we've got
Adjustment of Status applications for employment, they've approved 70,896 cases. On the family side,
they've approved 66,147 cases. Now let's look further down and see how many cases they've
received. They received 112,689 family-based petitions, but only approved 66,000 of them.
They received 204,851 employment-based Adjustment of Status, but only processed 17,896 of those.
If they're going to continue at this rate and not going to be able to speed up the processing,
they may not be able to use up all the visas that are available for applicants in this fiscal year.
This is definitely going to be a battle to try to preserve these visas. Just by way of comparison,
if you look at the fiscal year 2020, and you compare the amount of visas they were processing
that year, it was roughly 121,000. And that was during a pandemic. So unless they get their act
together, USCIS is likely to waste a lot of green cards this year. So, what can you do about it?
Definitely bring attention to your representatives about this situation to make sure that some more
pressure is put on USCIS to speed up the processing of visas. Once again, if you have
questions or concerns about this, make sure you let me know in the comments. And also, if you're
here for the first time, don't forget to subscribe to our channel, click the notification bell so you
don't miss any of our videos. And also give us a big like, so YouTube will be able to share
this with more people just like you. So now let's move to our next topic. Now let's talk about some
flexibilities that are coming from USCIS. When it comes to adjudicating applications. The first
big change that is happening started about a week ago, when USCIS came out with a new policy memo,
making it much easier to approve applications. And what I mean by that, back in 2018, under
the Trump administration, there was a policy that when you file an application, with USCIS, whether
it's citizenship, or a green card, or a work permit. If you are missing some initial evidence,
so let's say you forgot a birth certificate or let's say, your tax returns are missing certain
portions USCIS had the authority to completely deny your application without issuing your
request for evidence giving you the opportunity to clarify or provide an explanation. This was a very
harsh policy, and a lot of cases were denied. As a result, people forgot to attach initial evidence,
they were deficient or their information for financial support, for the affidavit of support.
Many, many cases like that were denied, and applicants lost their fees and sometimes lost
their eligibility. Well, a week ago, there was a new policy memo that came out that says no more.
We're back to what it was before that, before 2018, which means that when you file
an application and let's say you're deficient in some documents, USCIS is now required to send your
request for evidence and state please provide me the following documents so you can further
review the case and make a decision. This is the right thing to do. This is how it should
be. So remember, this is going to definitely help increase the approval rates of many petitions.
So remember, this is going to definitely help increase the approval rates of many petitions that
otherwise could have been denied, because people either don't have all the documents when they're
ready to file, or they're just not aware that they need to have the full set of evidence before
the final application. So that's going to open the door to more approvals. And we welcome this
flexibility from USCIS. As a great sign towards Biden's policy of restoring faith and confidence
into our immigration system. The next topic we're gonna talk about is even further flexibility that
just came a few days ago from USCIS, and this is regarding the deadlines. When you have to
respond to requests for evidence, requests to rescind your case, requests to deny your case,
or motions to reopen or reconsider. And the people who qualify are that those that have decisions
that were issued on March 1, 2020, all the way to September 30, 2021. If your deadlines are within
that time frame, you actually have automatically extra 60 days to come up with evidence, to provide
the necessary response, gives you more time to build a stronger case. And this is all under
these new flexibility guidelines to give you an extra 2 months to be able to respond to all these
government requests. Again, this started last year during the pandemic. And that continues today,
all the way through September 30, 2021. Which is great news because a lot of people may not be able
to get the evidence they need. If it's a request for a birth certificate from the home country,
and their registry is closed due to the pandemic. That gives you an extra 2 months
to work on getting the necessary documents without getting your application denied.
So we welcome that. And it's another great step in the right direction coming from USCIS
at the moment. The final most recent update from USCIS is that there will be accepting
resubmission of rejected H1B cases for the fiscal year 2021. And those cases were rejected
because they had a start date after October 1st of 2021. Remember that the fiscal year
starts on October 1, 2021. But in some cases, applicants requested a start date after October 1,
2021. USCIS rejected or closed many of these applications and under this new update,
they will be allowing these applicants to resubmit their applications and be considered again
for the process. So, it's important to know that you had to register, do the original registration
period in March. And the only reason why your case was rejected is because you had a starting
date after October 1, 2021. Such applicants have instructions to resubmit their cases
with the appropriate fees to the following addresses. And right now you can see on the screen
the correct address where you should be sending those H1B applications.
Remember that when you resubmit those H1B cases, make sure you have your fiscal year 2021 H1B cap
registration selection notice when you resend those cases, to the correct address,
as indicated here on the screen. So as you can see, we covered some pretty good information here.
We talked about some interesting statistics when it comes to adjudication of USCIS cases
inside the United States. We hope that we're going to see some more action to speed up processing.
So more applicants are going to be able to get the visas. We talked about flexibility to be able to
approve more applications. Moving forward we're gonna see more and more approvals are coming from
USCIS because of this new flexibility to not deny cases without issuing a request for evidence. We
talked about flexibility in responding to requests for evidence more time is given. And finally,
the new update or resubmission of wrongfully rejected HB1 cases with USCIS. So once again,
if you hear for the first time, do not forget to subscribe to our channel,
click the notification bell so you don't miss any of our videos. And also, if you need help with
your cases, if you need to set up a consultation, you can always send me a text at 619-483-4549
or you can call this number and you'll be able to set up a consultation so you'll get the help
you need with your specific case. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.