Visa Services

The Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (Ombudsman) would like to warn its stakeholders of reports that certain Department of Homeland Security (DHS) telephone numbers, including the Ombudsman’s main telephone number, have been used recently as part of a telephone spoofing scam targeting individuals throughout the country. Spoofing is the deliberate falsifying of information transmitted to a caller ID display to disguise an identity.

Effective December 2, 2019, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is increasing the fee to request premium processing for Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker and Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker. The fee will increase from $1410 to $1440. This increase, which is done in accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act, reflects the full amount of inflation from the implementation of the premium processing fee in June 2001 through August 2019 based on the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U).

On May 3, 2019, the U.S. District Court of North Carolina issued an injunction on USCIS policy memoranda titled, “Accrual of Unlawful Presence and F, J, and M Nonimmigrants”, issued on May 10, 2018 and August 9. 2018, respectively. Due to the nationwide preliminary injunction, USCIS is preliminarily enjoined from applying the policies in the policy memoranda to F, J, and M nonimmigrants.