Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, is a web-based collection of selected historical materials from Harvard’s libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the US from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression.

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/

“The visa squeeze leaves companies scrambling for ways to retain valuable job candidates, including using other types of visas and temporary overseas assignments. Google Inc., which filed more than 300 H-1B applications this year, says it will send 70 new hires who didn’t get visas to overseas offices until it can try again next year. Many of the Intel Corp. job candidates who failed to get H-1Bs will stay in school and try for the visa next year while Intel holds open the jobs…”

Wall Street Journal, Firms Get Creative To Work Around Visa Bottlenecks (08/27/2007)

BIA Decision - August 15, 2007
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) dismissed an appeal, filed by Connecticut immigration lawyer Joe Tapper, challenging an earlier finding by an Immigration Judge that an initial visa petition was not “approvable when filed” and therefore did not meet the grandfathering requirements under 8 C.F.R. § 1245.10. In order for a visa petition to be “approvable when filed,” the visa petition must have been (1) properly filed, (2) meritorious in fact, and (3) not frivolous.

Approvable when filed means that, as of the date of the filing of the qualifying immigrant visa petition under section 204 of the Act or qualifying application for labor certification, the qualifying petition or application was properly filed, meritorious in fact, and non-frivolous (“frivolous” being defined herein as patently without substance). This determination will be made based on the circumstances that existed at the time the qualifying petition or application was filed. A visa petition that was properly filed on or before April 30, 2001, and was approvable when filed, but was later withdrawn, denied, or revoked due to circumstances that have arisen after the time of filing, will preserve the alien beneficiary’s grandfathered status if the alien is otherwise eligible to file an application for adjustment of status under section 245(i) of the Act. 8 C.F.R. § 1245.10(a)(3) (emphasis added).

This appeal addressed the second prong - whether the inital visa petition was “meritorious in fact” - and illustrates that determinations will be made based on the circumstances that existed at the time the qualifying petitions or applications were filed. This standard applies to both marriage-based and employment-based adjustment of status applications filed under section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

For additional information on section 245(i) and the definition of “approvable when filed”, see

Yates Memo :: March 9, 2005 :: Approvable When Filed.

…part 274a of chapter I of title 8 of the Code of Federal Regulations is amended.

Section 274a.1(l) is revised to read as follows:

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USCIS FAQ #3.

Employment-Based Adjustment Applications Filed by Aliens Whose Priority Dates are Current under Department of State July Visa Bulletin No. 107.

Adjustment applications and ancillary benefits – The new application fee for an I-485 is a package fee that includes associated EAD and advance parole applications.Thus, if you file an I-485 with the fee listed above, while you will still need to submit applications for an EAD and advance parole, you will not need to pay a separate fee so long as your adjustment application is pending. However, if you filed your I-485 before this fee change, to apply for or renew your EAD or advance parole, you must file a new application with the new fee for those applications.

Full list of USCIS filing fees.