USCIS Changes Filing Procedures for I-140 Immigrant and I-129 Nonimmigrant Petitions
Effective April 1, 2006, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will institute a new system of "bi-specialization" whereby two of the four regional service centers will specialize in adjudicating I-140 employment-based immigrant petitions and the other two will specialize in adjudicating I-129 nonimmigrant petitions. The stated goal of this new system is to "allow the USCIS to better manage cases and improve customer service."
The Nebraska and Texas Service Centers will be the centers responsible for adjudicating I-140 petitions and the Vermont and California Service Centers will be responsible for I-129 petitions. As of April 1st, all I-140 petitions should be filed with the Nebraska Service Center and all I-129 petitions should be filed with the Vermont Service Center. These two service centers will then allocate workload between themselves and their respective "sister" service centers. To learn more about the new filing procedures, please refer to the USCIS' official Fact Sheet released on March 24, 2006 which is available on our website at: http://www.mgplc.com//resources/govt_memoranda/USCIS_3-24-2006_factsheet.pdf
How this Impacts Employers and Foreign National Employees
We are hopeful that the new system of specialization will help the USCIS to be more efficient and improve processing times for both I-129 and I-140 petitions. Although the USCIS' official Fact Sheet indicates that this new system will not go into effect until April 1st, most I-140s on file with the California and Vermont Service Centers have already been transferred, or are in the process of being transferred, to either the Nebraska and Texas Service Centers. This may result in some delay for I-140s that have already been filed.
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