Being a foreign student in the United States can be stressful and confusing. Properly navigating immigration requirements and maintaining status is extremely important. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has created a website to help current and prospective students through the process of coming to the U.S. for study. Study in the States contains information for students [...]

As our regular readers will know, the DHS move to allow OPT extensions for STEM Students on F1 Visa was challenged in court, on grounds that the extension is a political move to allow alien workers to transition into H1-B status. However, on August 5th 2008, U.S. District Court Judge Faith Hochberg denied a preliminary [...]

On May 29, 2008, a conglomerate of anti-H1B organizations including the Immigration Reform Law Institute, The Programmers Guild and a few other groups, filed a lawsuit in the U.S District court in Newark, NJ challenging the authority of the DHS in creating a rule such as the OPT extension rule. The lawsuit is urging the [...]

April 2008 is turning out to be a land mark month for student visa program in US. First, the Department of Homeland Security came up with an Interim Rule on OPTs for F1 Students which, among other thing, made the transition from student to employee status much easier now. Now, barely two weeks after that [...]

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced today it would allow F-1 students, whose H-1B petitions have been selected for fiscal year (FY) 2009, to request a change of status in lieu of consular notification. This is a short-term measure taken to accommodate the changes introduced by the recent Interim final rule on F1 [...]