USA IMMIGRATION NEWS

USCIS Revises Form I-485 and its Filing Locations

Friday, 5 March 2010

Recently the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has revised Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, and implemented new filing locations for the form.

According to USCIS, the changes are part of an overall effort to transition the intake of USCIS benefit forms from Service Centers to Lockbox facilities; in an attempt to provide the public with more efficient and effective initial processing of applications and fees.

Visa Applicants must now submit Form I-485 to a USCIS Lockbox facility, depending on the eligibility category under which they are filing, as provided in the form instructions. To facilitate the smooth implementation of the new procedure USCIS will have a short grace period allowing the use of the old filing locations and form versions. USCIS Service Centers will accept previous versions of Form I-485 and forward all Form I-485 applications to the appropriate Lockbox facility until March 29, 2010. However, the USCIS warns that after March 29, 2010, they will only accept the Form I-485 dated "12/03/09." Any previous versions of the form that are submitted after March 29, 2010 will be rejected; and the Service Centers will return any incorrectly filed Form I-485 with instructions to send the application to the correct location.

Form I-485 is utilized by foreign nationals to apply for permanent residence while they are in the United States. Generally, I-485 applicants are present in the United States in a temporary nonimmigrant status and wish to Adjust Status to permanent resident status. I-485 applicants must have a pending or approved I-140 Immigrant Visa Petition or I-130 Petition for Alien Relative in order to be eligible to Adjust Status. Further, applicants must also have a visa number available in order to file the I-485 application. The visa number availability is announced in the Visa Bulletin published by the Department of State each month. The visa bulletin is classified into immigrant visa categories (i.e. Employment, Family and Diversity Immigrant), and country of birth. When the date published in the chart for the applicant's category is on or after the applicant’s priority date, the priority date is considered current and an immigrant visa number is available. Thus the applicant is eligible to apply for permanent residence. The priority date is the date the PERM application or I-130 petition is filed.

If you are interested in Visas to USA, contact Migration Expert for information and advice on which visa is best suited to you. You can also try our visa eligibility assessment to see if you are eligible to apply for a visa to the United States of America.