Talk about U.S. Immigration

Adjustment of Status: Validity of Medical Examination

Adjustment of Status applicants have good news. USCIS extends the validity of certain certificates of medical examination accompanying a Green Card applications until its adjudication. The agency would maintain this policy till the end of 2009.

The adjustment of status applicants are required to provide a medical examination certificate on Form I-693 which generally expired in a year. The rule necessitated a new medical examination when the applicantions were considered for adjudication more than a year after filing due to backlogs.

Because of the Visa Bulletin mix up and fee increases, there were record immigration filings in 2007. This seemingly had caused a huge backlog at the USCIS. The piked up cases necessitated that an application be filed annually where authorizations were granted just for a year eg. employment authorization were granted annually. The present extension of the medical certificate validity comes as yet another government policy to ease the problems created by the backlog.

The government policy on extending the medical certificate validity is available only in some cases though. It is available only to where medical certificate did not show a class A or Class B medical condition relating to the adjustment applicant.

I-94 Error

Time and again I see that the foreign nationals have issues with their I-94 period i.e. the period for which a foreign national is permitted to stay in the U.S. When a foreign national enters U.S. with a visa, an I-94 stamp is placed on the person’s passport. This stamp among other things contains the date upto which the foreign national’s stay within U.S. is lawful.

Occassionally, an I-94 stamp may, erroneously, be made to coincide with the date of validity of their visa. The foreign national would do himself a favor if he checked the date on the stamp and other biographical information entered on the I-94 stamp before leaving the officer’s desk. An error corrected on the spot would save the foreign national from a lot of worries later on although CBP offers deferred inspection services that could be availed for I-94 corections.

All such efforts to correct the errors should be undertaken in polite and peaceful manner.