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US Citizenship &
Immigration Services

US State Department

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Department of Labor ETA

July 2, 2007

Please be advised that the State Department issued the following statement this morning:

The sudden backlog reduction efforts by Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices during the past month have resulted in the use of almost 60,000 Employment numbers. As a result of this unexpected action it has been necessary to make immediate adjustments to several previously announced cut-off dates. All Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices have been notified of the following:

Effective Monday July 2, 2007 there will be no further authorizations inresponse to requests for Employment-based preference cases. All numbers available to these categories under the FY-2007 annual numerical limitation have been made available.

Employment preference numbers will once again be available to these chargeability areas beginning October 1, 2007, under the FY-2008 annual numerical limitation.

Department of State Publication 9514
CA/VO: July 2, 2007

CIS has just confirmed that it will reject all employment-based I-485s, effective today.  What this means for your employees is that it appears that no pending Forms I-485 will be approved until October 1, at the earliest, and no new applications will be accepted.  We plan to contact all affected clients individually, but in the meantime please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns about a specific matter.