In this week’s episode, BAL’s Tiffany Derentz provides an update on the U.S. State Department’s domestic visa extension pilot program, which ended May 1, plus the latest immigration news from the U.S. and around the world.

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In this week’s episode, BAL’s Tiffany Derentz provides an update on the U.S. State Department’s domestic visa extension pilot program, which ended May 1, plus the latest immigration news from the U.S. and around the world.

I’m Rebecca Sanabria and I’m from Dallas, Texas.

Headlights

In January 2024, the U.S. Department of State launched a pilot program to process domestic visa extensions for certain H-1B visa applicants, allowing visa holders to extend their visa in the United States without having to return to their home country.

Due to increased security requirements, the Department of State stopped domestic renewals of nonimmigrant visas in 2004. This pilot program was designed to test the Department’s technical and operational ability to resume domestic visa renewals after two decades of changes in laws and technologies.

Tiffany Derentz, senior counsel in BAL’s Washington office, reports in the BAL Immigration Report on the current status of domestic visa extensions since the end of the pilot project on May 1.

Derentz: Overall, the feedback has been very positive and we (BAL) have actually given the Visa Office feedback to consider when evaluating the pilot and planning the next steps. But overall, we have heard a lot of very positive experiences and I think that in many ways the Department has exceeded people’s expectations in terms of timing and ease of running the program. Of course, there were some ambiguities and I’m sure they will improve on some areas. But overall, it was a very positive experience for everyone who was able to apply under the pilot.

When asked whether this positive feedback meant an official resumption of domestic visa extensions, Derentz answered with a clear yes.

Derentz: We hear that there will be a domestic visa extension program, but we probably won’t know anything specific until the end of the year or early 2025. So I’m hesitant to say yes because it’s an election year and there are elections right before the end of the year.

Technically, the department had the authority to issue certain nonimmigrant visas in the United States, even under the previous administration. When domestic visa extensions were stopped after 9/11, 2004, the regulations were never updated, so the underlying authority continues. It’s always been there, but the previous administration had no plans to reinstate domestic visa extensions, especially when Trump withdrew the interview waiver authority, which has a very similar basis to the domestic visa extension program and requires applicants to be interviewed for a visa. You can’t interview applicants in the United States, which would force them to go abroad. So the previous administration had no plans to resurrect this program from the dead, so to speak. I think it’s really going to depend on what stage the domestic program is in. If the Visa Office can get this up and running before a potential change in administration, it might be a little harder to reverse.

I could also imagine that there would be a lot of pressure from businesses on the government to keep the law, because ultimately the visas that are allowed to be issued under the existing regulations are business-related categories. But if it never happens and we have a change of government, I would be very surprised if a new government reintroduced it. Even if all the planning and everything else was in place and they were ready to make that announcement, I would be surprised if the new government reintroduced it.

Derentz continued to provide insight into what we can expect from a domestic visa extension program under the current administration, the potential timeline for the program’s implementation, and any anticipated obstacles.

Derentz: There are actually plans under the current administration for a domestic visa extension program. And similar to the pilot, we expect that H-1B visa holders who were not initially included in the pilot, such as people whose visas were not issued in Canada or India, will be eligible for the program once the new program is implemented. And we also expect that their family members on H-4 visas will be eligible as well.

The domestic extension program would no longer be a pilot program at that point. The program can include other temporary visa classes, and in fact, the department’s regulations already allow that. They just haven’t done that in a long time, so I don’t expect them to include all of them at once, but rather expand the program over time. And then while I would expect some of the eligibility criteria for extension under the new program would be similar to interview waiver applicants, and those are people who are still applying for their visa overseas but don’t necessarily have to go to the embassy or consulate in person to do the interview with the consular officer, but they still have to meet certain criteria. But some of the limitations that we saw under the pilot program should no longer apply going forward. For example, one big limitation was that applicants had to apply within a certain time period and submit all of their documentation within that time period. And this would just be an ongoing program where people could apply, you know, whenever they needed to apply.

There’s no timeline for the program expansion per se. It’s an election year, so it depends in part on how far they get with the announcement. If the program isn’t actually going to be rolled out and running by 2025, the expansion could happen over the course of 2025, 2026, or maybe even 2027. But we don’t know any specific dates yet. We actually don’t have any publicly available information on what the plan is. All we know is that we’ve heard there are plans for a domestic renewal program, and based on similar programs that have been done in the past with other government agencies and the State Department, any new program is typically expanded over time so that the capacity and ability of people to process these types of applications can be built up.

One hurdle is the payment of visa fees. The Visa Office does not have a mechanism to accept fee payments domestically. And so for the pilot, they had to rely on Canada’s and India’s existing platforms, so it was a little shaky depending on the country of application, especially for India. But that’s because they don’t have that mechanism, and for the purposes of a pilot, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to put all that effort into implementing that if the pilot was not successful. But since the pilot was successful, I expect that’s one of the areas that they’re focusing on and trying to implement so that they have a consistent way to accept fee payments within the United States rather than having to rely on other platforms abroad. And I think another hurdle is just resources. They haven’t issued visas domestically for twenty years, so the Visa Office needs to build the capacity to make those decisions, which takes time.

BAL continues to monitor news regarding the Domestic Visa Extension Program and will post updates as they become available. Visit BAL.com and subscribe to the BAL newsletter to receive the latest insights from our legal experts.

Immigration News Summary

And now the most important immigration news of the week.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released updated data on the H-1B registration process following the completion of the second round of the lottery for fiscal year 2025, which resulted in an overall selection rate of 28.7% of all eligible registrations. Data trends show a 3.9% year-over-year increase in H-1B selection rates from fiscal years 2021 to 2025.

In the UK, the Home Secretary announced that the planned increase in the minimum income limit for people bringing family members to the UK on family visas would be put on hold. The increase will now be suspended until the Advisory Council on Migration has completed a review of the impact of the increased income limit.

And in Singapore, authorities have released the upcoming salary benchmarking table as part of the first round of annual updates to the Complementarity Assessment Framework criteria. Candidates must pass the COMPASS points-based assessment system and additionally meet the required salary to obtain a work permit. The upcoming table will apply to initial work permit applications made after 1 January 2025 and renewal applications made after 1 July 2025.

Find all our news at BAL.com/news. Follow us on X at @BAL_Immigration. And sign up at BAL.com/newsletter to receive daily immigration updates in your inbox.

We’ll be back next week with more insights into the world of corporate immigration.

I’m Rebecca Sanabria. Thanks for listening.

copyright

The BAL Immigration Report is provided by BAL. Copyright 2024 Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP. All rights reserved. Digital redistribution to the public is permitted only with the express written permission of Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP. This report does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. For more information, visit bal.com.