Updated
Apr 12, 2007 at 12:34 AM by lawrence01
No one can guarantee and I mean
no one, including the immigration lawyer who files the I-140 petition to be approved in just 45 days or whatever date they have set it into.
First of all, ALL and I mean
ALL I-140 petitions are filed in Nebraska Service Center (NSC)
initially then they choose w/c files are transferred to Texas Service Center (TSC) or remains in NSC. Neither the immigration layer and the applicant (nurse) have a say on w/c service center the file eventually ends up with.
Currently, those files w/c are under NSC averages anywhere bet. 6-10 months of processing time, while on TSC it averages more or less 2 months.
Is there a basis on w/c file gets transferred to TSC or NSC? Probably, yes but USCIS did not made public any reason or basis they use; so no one knows the basis, including the immigration lawyers. If the immigration lawyers do not know then the agencies do not know as well.
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Also, in line w/ the above. No one also knows for sure when retrogression will be lifted or if it will drag on for years.
Right now, the current situation is
no green card visa for nurses (retrogression) and also no H1B visa as well. It has been used up (H1B) in just 1 day that it was made available (all 65,000) and many files were rejected since 150,000 petitions were filed. The H1B visas in the 1st place are not meant for nurses and is very rare that USCIS approves such petitions for nurses who are not specialists.
And to make sure that another piece of new info. would never be used as an excuse. There are 7000 H1b visas that are still available BUT this are from the 20,000 visas that are reserved for those who graduated with Advanced Degrees in American Universities. There is a separate 20,000 cap reserved for them but they are exclusively for those who graduated w/ Advanced Degrees from American Universities only.
Basically, what we are saying is strike out the H1B visa from your minds as it is not for nurses and it's gone for this year and the same thing will happen next year (April 1, 2008) as there would only be still 65,000 visas available and even if that number doubles when the STRIVE Act or CIR gets approved; it's still way below the 150,000 that were filed just for this year. Expect more people will file for H1B next year and definitely more than the 150,000 that filed this year as both those who got rejected this year and the 1st timers who will file next year will be part of the pot for another lottery.
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