Foreign Credential Evaluations, Inc.

This is a win-win for everyone involved in international education in the U.S. - international students, colleges, universities, and employers!

We welcome lifting the ban on new immigrants who apply for permanent visas (green cards) from outside the United States!

In a recent (2/18/21) post on Lexology, Angelo A. Paparelli from Seyfarth Shaw LLP writes about the more inclusive language that Tracy Renaud, Acting Director of USCIS, uses to describe foreign citizens. This is a welcome change - please see below! "The English nursery rhyme was wrong. Not only do sticks and stones break our bones, but words can also hurt. This is the lesson recently imparted by the Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Tracy ...Renaud, in a recent internal memorandum. Insisting on a new set of descriptors for the foreign citizens whom her agency serves, she banished into exile the word, alien, and the phrase, illegal alien. Henceforth, she declared, more inclusive language, such as noncitizen, undocumented noncitizen, or undocumented individual, must be used in USCIS officers’ internal and external communications, according to Axios and BuzzFeed News. This is a welcome change. For far too long, the exhausting and fearsome journey of immigration has been made more difficult by the hurtful taunt, alien, a word employed throughout the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Reportedly, the Biden Administration in its comprehensive reform bill would likewise eliminate the offensive word, and substitute noncitizen, everywhere that alien now appears in the INA, the U.S. Code, uncodified statutes, and all agency regulations and executive branch communications something California did in 2015, while opting instead for foreign national, rather than noncitizen. FCE welcomes this change!

Prospective H-1B applicants: important information regarding the registration process that begins on March 9, 2021 from Greenspoon Marder:

USCIS is delaying the implementation of the Wage-Based H-1B allocation rule proposed by the Trump administration and for the coming year will continue to allocate H-1B visas using the same lottery method as in the past. See this update from Foster Immigration!