Insights & Updates on EB-1A Green Card and U.S. Immigration

A newly introduced Senate bill could rewrite the rules of America’s legal immigration system from the ground up. It could reshape how employment-based green cards are awarded, and as well as narrow family sponsorship. The bill also permanently proposes to scrap the Diversity Visa lottery altogether. The bill is titled as Americans First Immigration Act and was introduced by Republican senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. As always, our EB-1A consultants have plunged into the depth of this bill and outlined what consequences this bill could pose in the U.S immigration landscape.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has issued new guidance that will change how the agency calculates certain filing deadlines that land on weekends or federal holidays. Immigration attorneys are saying that it could carry serious consequences for applicants racing against an age-based cutoff.

Through the last three decades, the last week of September has meant one thing for millions of hopeful immigrants worldwide: the countdown to the Diversity Visa Lottery's annual registration window. The lottery traditionally opens in early October. This year, that countdown has stalled indefinitely.

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower-court decision that freed a Georgetown University scholar who had advocated for Palestinian rights and opposed Israel's war in Gaza, according to Reuters. The filing, submitted by the Department of Justice on Monday, asks the justices to decide whether federal immigration law barred a district court judge from ordering the release of Badar Khan Suri, in consideration of the latter's claim that his detention violated his due process.

October marks the start of a new federal fiscal year, and with it, a fresh allocation of roughly 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas. For applicants whose priority dates sit tantalizingly close to the cutoff, the hope also rises whether they will finally be able to file the Form I-485, i.e. the application to adjust status to permanent residence. As of mid-September, however, immigration attorneys are urging a dose of caution alongside the optimism. "It is therefore too early to say that EB-2, EB-3, or EB-2 NIW moved forward, retrogressed, or became current," one legal analysis noted, pointing out that the October bulletin had not yet been published as of September 11, 2026. Still, the employment-based backlogs "are expected to remain under significant pressure until FY2027 begins on October 1," according to Visa Bulletin trend analysis. Moreover, in several analyses, the categories like EB-1 and EB-3 are seen as more likely to see modest forward movement in the coming months.

For anyone who has ever waited anxiously for a visa decision, the promise of "faster processing for a fee" can sound like a lifeline. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has a blunt message for applicants tempted by such offers: it is probably an outright scam.

President Donald Trump has extended, by another year, the restrictions he first imposed on the H-1B non-immigrant visa program in September 2025, the White House said in a proclamation released on Friday, September 18. The move, reported by Reuters' Kanishka Singh, keeps in place both a broad entry restriction on certain nonimmigrant workers and the administration's push to permanently raise H-1B filing costs to at least $100,000. It is up from a longstanding fee that had ranged between roughly $2,000 and $5,000, or as some tallies put it, $960 to $7,595 depending on petition type.

Though U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV blocked the Department of Homeland Security's fixed-admission-period rule on September 14, 2026, the legal fight over "Duration of Status" didn't end. It just moved to a different arena: campus international offices, which had spent two months preparing students for a system that, at least for now, is not happening. The striking thing is how differently those offices are choosing to communicate that reversal. Comparing guidance across several campuses shows two distinct philosophies at work: some schools are urging patience and caution, others are moving quickly to normalize the situation and get students back to their regular routines.

New permanent residents say their green cards are arriving without the decades-old “Welcome to the United States” booklet. USCIS says nothing has changed: the information, it insists, was “readily available online” all along. For years, the arrival of a green card in an immigrant’s mailbox came with a much coveted companion: a slim, government-printed booklet titled Welcome to the United States: A Guide for New Immigrants. It explained how to get a Social Security number, find a job, register a child for school, and, eventually, apply for citizenship. Now, that booklet appears to be disappearing; not through any formal announcement, but through its simple absence.

A revived and broadened "public charge" test, a mandatory new version of Form I-485, and no grace period for stragglers, are all starting tomorrow. Beginning September 18, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will apply a significantly broader "public charge" test to people seeking permanent residence through adjustment of status.

The system that underpins most employer-sponsored green cards in the United States has not been substantially rewritten since George W. Bush's first term. That is now poised to change. On September 16, 2026, Business Standard reported that the U.S. Department of Labor has moved ahead with plans to overhaul the PERM labour certification process. This, in turn, is likely to potentially bring the most significant changes to the employer-sponsored green card system in more than two decades. As always our EB-1A consultants have presented a detailed breakdown on the changes in PERM rule and what it could mean for the green card aspirants.

New York City is once again at the center of a legal battle over immigration policy. On September 14, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that the city had filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new "public charge" rule from the Department of Homeland Security: a rule that could reshape how immigration officers decide who is allowed to obtain a green card in America.