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6 May 2015: We are noticing a VERY disturbing trend: USCIS seems to have reverted back to the position (or are in the process of reverting back) that priority date will be lost if the I-140 is revoked, even if revoked by the employer, not USCIS.

Hello, everyone.  This is Rajiv S. Khanna for immigration.com, the Law Offices of Rajiv S. Khanna, P.C.

I am very pleased to report this morning that I saw a news report from USCIS Nebraska Service Center teleconference on April  12, 2012, that clarified you can carry forward the Priority Date from one I-140 approval to another 1-140 approval for another employer, even if the old employer revokes the I-140.  USCIS has flip-flopped on this issue several times.

Let me first bring you to the news.  Right here it says.  If you look at the question number two.  The answer is, both centers adhere to retaining the earlier priority date, unless the I-140 was revoked for fraud or willful misrepresentation.  So the idea here is this:  even if you go from Employer A to Employer B, and Employer A revokes the I-140 approval, the Priority Date is yours to carry forward to any employer you like--B,C,D,E--unless the employer A’s I- 140 was revoked for fraud or misrepresentation.

The history of this interpretation is strange.  A few years ago, this was the position.  USCIS always said you can carry the Priority Date forward.  A couple of years ago, they started saying, “No, you cannot.”  We had several cases in which they raised this issue, so anybody who has had this issue decided against them can actually go back and file a motion to reopen/reconsider.  I advise you to think about this very carefully.  You could actually go back and ask USCIS for the Priority Date to be carried forward if they had earlier denied it.  There’s  a whole lot of people who went through this.  File a motion to reconsider.  Then USCIS started saying, “Well, you cannot do it.”  

Now they are back to their old, very good interpretation, which is in line with Congressional intention for AC-21, where Congress wanted to create room for people to leave their jobs and move on to other jobs because Green Cards were taking so long.  So Congress said, “We’ll put in AC-21.”  That will make it easier for employees to change jobs without losing their Green Card benefits.

This is excellent news, folks.  Once again, I am summarizing it for you.  You can carry your Priority Date forward, even if the old I-140 is revoked, unless the I-140 is revoked for some fraud or some willful misinterpretation.

One more thing I wanted to add.  This is not good for H-1.  Don’t think that if the I-140 is revoked, you can still use it for H-1 extensions.  You cannot.  If you want H-1 extensions beyond six years, you’ve got to have something else going.  You cannot rely on the revoked I-140.

That’s all I have to say on this issue.  I will speak with you folks soon.

Thank you for listening.

You can use Immigration.Com "Advanced Search" feature to locate information more intelligently than just through a "word match," a literal search.  Note that we are FOREVER working to get this better and better.  So, each time you visit, you may find new items and improvement.

Using "Advanced Search" on Immigration.Com

Hello, everyone.  This is Rajiv S. Khanna for immigration.com, the Law Offices of Rajiv S. Khanna, P.C.

I wanted to show you the “Advanced Search” feature on immigration.com.  I enjoy it because it does focus your search considerably.  We have a lot of information.  It can be hard to parse through the information.

Every day we do something new and try to get better and better and better.  I still have a lot of work to do on the website.  The team has a lot of work to do on the website.  But we have enough information at least to get you going and keep you in the right direction.

Let me start with the “Advanced Search” feature.

If you press on the “Search” button with nothing in it, just search.  It brings you to this button, where you have “Advanced Search.”  So you go into “Advanced Search.”  The top portion is “Search,” but the bottom portion is “Advanced Search.”  Click on “Advanced Search.”

You can search by putting in a search term which contains any of the words, contains a specific phrase, for example, “Adjustment of Status”--that phrase should be there; or containing none of the words.  Some words you may not want. 

I particularly like the fact that you can search in particular categories.  These are categories, which are like tags.  When you have tags, like a tag cloud.  So these categories that are much more specific.  And then, on top of that, you have types.  There are content types.  For example, let’s say I want to know if there’s a Community Story—you know, people’s experience.  We tried to data mine some of these from our own forums. 

If there’s a particular Community Story for citizenship.  Find and click on the category, “Citizenship” under “Citizenship and Naturalization.”  I know what specific story we’re looking for.  Let’s put in the word “Detroit.”  So I want somebody’s Community Story of what happened during Citizenship/Naturalization in Detroit.

And, after that, when I hit the “Advanced Search” button, I’m led right to the story, “Interview in Detroit.”  This is somebody’s story about what happened in Detroit.

Another neat thing that we have is that, if you look at the bottom, we have these tags dimmed.  The reason they are dimmed is because I’m not quite happy with the way we have cross-referenced information.  But this is just the beginning.  I’ve been doing this for the last several years.  I’m still not happy, and we’re going to do more, a lot more, making information easily accessible to all of you. 

So, let’s look at this.  If I click on one of these tags, it will actually bring up the content, all the content, that has been tagged with that particular tag.  So, if you look at this, all the particular content that has been tagged.  If I look at any content.  Let’s say, for example, if I go to “H-1.”  I click on “Work Visa,” I go to “H Visa,” and I go to “H Visas for Nurses,” for example.  If there’s any tags at the bottom of this and there should be.  There’s not going to be a lot of information, but whatever information that we have will be all there for you.  Every piece of information that was tagged with that came up. 

So, I think this should help you find your way around immigration.com.  And I love doing this, and I thank you for being here.