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The Social Security Administration (SSA) lists the following documentation required of a foreign worker in order to obtain a Social Security number (SSN) for work purposes:

The 109th session of Congress ended in December with no progress on major immigration reform legislation or on the Securing Knowledge, Innovation, and Leadership (SKIL) Act of 2006, which was intended to provide visa shortage relief for key foreign nationals working in the U.S. As noted by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in a detailed… Read More

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has received a sufficient number of H-2B petitions to reach the cap for the first six months of fiscal year (FY) 2007. USCIS will reject new petitions for H-2B workers seeking employment start dates before April 1, 2007. The agency will continue to accept petitions for… Read More

The Department of State issued a final rule amending guidance to consular officers for the waiver of personal appearances of applicants for nonimmigrant visas. The most significant change is that a consular officer must now interview persons in the same age ranges as persons covered by biometric collection requirements. In addition to the existing list… Read More

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a public notice on December 19, 2006, outlining processing changes for new filings, based on claims of exceptional hardship or persecution, of the Application of Waiver of the Foreign Residence Requirement of section 212(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Among other things, USCIS’s Nebraska, Texas, and Vermont… Read More

Over 6.4 million entries for the 2008 Diversity Visa (DV) green card lottery were received during the two-month electronic registration period, from October 4, 2006, through December 3, 2006. This was an increase from the more than 5.5 million applications received in the 2007 DV lottery.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has published a notice in the Federal Register confirming its announcement last month that it will be conducting a pilot of a redesigned naturalization test. USCIS plans to revise the naturalization testing process to ensure that the process is uniform; currently, test content varies among USCIS district offices. Based… Read More

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report discussing the use of J-1 visa waivers as a major means of providing physicians to practice in underserved areas of the U.S. As the report notes, over 1,000 waivers were requested in each of fiscal years 2003 through 2005 by states and three federal agencies.… Read More

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a new report that biometric US-VISIT exit monitoring cannot now be implemented without having a major impact on land POE facilities. An interim nonbiometric exit technology being tested does not meet the statutory requirement and cannot ensure that visitors who enter the U.S. are the same as… Read More

A new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Inspector General report concludes that USCIS “remains entrenched in a cycle of continual planning, with limited progress toward achieving its long-term transformation goals.” Overcoming hindrances to moving from planning to implementation “is critical to addressing longstanding USCIS process and systems issues and realizing a more effective benefits… Read More