Lawsuit Planned As Visa Numbers Disappear

When the Department of State announced last June 13 that immigrant visa numbers for all employment-based categories except that for low–skilled workers would be available in July 2007, intending immigrants rushed at great expense to gather their supporting documents, including their medical examination report.

A properly filed adjustment of status application would have entitled them to interim benefits such as work authorization and travel permit.

We immediately notified our clients about the urgency in submitting their applications. We believed that they had a short window, possibly one or two months, to prepare all their requirements.

On June 29, we sent their applications via express mail and felt confident that they would be accepted.

All Visa Numbers Used Up

On July 2, the first business day the applications were supposed to be accepted, the USCIS made the unprecedented announcement that the Department of State had revised the July 2007 visa bulletin.

The USCIS went on to say that all visa numbers had already been allocated and therefore it was rejecting all adjustment applications.

What Happened?

According to informed sources, when the June 13 announcement came out, there were still 40,000 employment visa numbers left for fiscal year 2007. But the USCIS instructed its offices to accelerate the adjudication of pending cases regardless of whether background checks were cleared. In June alone, 60,000 cases were reportedly approved.

The rejection of adjustment applications has elicited condemnation from lawyers and immigration advocates.

Even the Chair of the House Judiciary Sub-committee on Immigration, Rep. Zen Lofgren, express her serious concerns that the unprecedented action gravely “undermined the stability and predictability of US immigrations laws.”

Kathleen Campbell Walker, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said that “this hoax perpetrated by these two government agencies is unconscionable.”

A few weeks ago the Department of State had made a similar action when it announced in the middle of May the availability of visa numbers for low skilled workers in June 2007. However, on June 6 the USCIS said that visa numbers for that category had been exhausted and was therefore rejecting applications filed on or after that date.

Class Action

Because of this bait and switch, the American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) is preparing to file a class action against the USCIS and the Department of State. The suit will be filed on behalf of those who have been harmed because of the rejection or expectation of rejection of their properly submitted adjustment of status applications.

The AILF believes that the Department of State and the USCIS violated the law, specifically 8 CFR 245.1(g) (1). The AILF will ask the court to order the USCIS to accept the rejected adjustment applications and treat them as having been filed as of the date they originally would have been filed had USCIS not rejected them.