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• Dear Stakeholder,

A Washington DC Federal court has held that DHS improperly promulgated the 2008 regulations creating the 17-month OPT CAP GAP extension for STEM graduates (strictly speaking, this is not reallly "CAP GAP" issue).  According to the court, DHS should have placed the proposed regulation before the public, allowed everyone to comment, considered the comments and then published the final regulation.  Thus, DHS violated the procedural mandate requiring "notice and comment."  According to the court, there was no good reason to skip the "notice and comment" mandate.

In order to balance workloads, USCIS recently began transferring some cases from the Vermont Service Center to the California Service Center. The affected cases include:

• Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative
• Form I-751, Petition to Remove the Conditions on Residence

How You Will Be Affected

USCIS will discontinue its legacy e-Filing system in order to maintain data security standards and focus resources on the replacement Electronic Immigration System. The legacy e-Filing system has offered online filing for several USCIS forms. After the system is decommissioned, you must use paper forms when filing all categories of:

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson has extended Haiti’s designation for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for an additional 18 months. The extended designation is effective Jan. 23, 2016, through July 22, 2017.