As of midnight, Friday, January 19th, the Federal government has shut down. Congress remains locked in a stalemate over the fate of 700,000 Dreamers vs. the Trump border wall and other hard line immigration changes. Many federal government departments and agencies are involved in handling U.S. immigration filings, and all of them are impacted by the shutdown. Services essential to national security will continue, but non-essential operations will be impacted. Department of L

A federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to keep in place the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children from deportation and allows them to work legally, while a lawsuit proceeds. The order, signed by U.S. District Judge Williams Alsup, marks a major triumph for immigrant rights groups who have rallied around the program that benefits nearly 700,000 people. The pr

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin to accept H-1B cap filings for employment in Fiscal Year 2019, which begins October 1, 2018, on April 2, 2018. As usual, competition for FY 2019 H-1B employment visas is expected to be extremely high. The 65,000 standard cap numbers and 20,000 additional numbers for holders of U.S. advanced degrees are likely to be exhausted quickly. ILG expects FY 2019 to be the most challenging H-1B season in many years, in lig

The Trump Administration continues to reduce the number of immigrants granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allows them to live and work legally in the US. TPS protects these individuals from deportation, as a form of humanitarian relief for people who would face extreme hardship if they were forced to return to homelands devastated by armed conflict and natural disasters. This week, the Trump administration ended protections for more than 200,000 Salvadorans living