U.S. Government Shut Down January 2018

The federal government has officially shut down as of January 20, 2018 as the Senate failed to pass a continuing resolution. While USCIS as a fee-for-service agency will continue to operate, 4 immigration programs including the EB-5 regional center program, the religious worker program, the “Conrad 30” program, and E-Verify have lapsed with the last continuing resolution. USCIS issued an e-mail confirming that these four programs are affected by the lapse and may be suspended. As a result, we anticipate that USCIS will reject I-526 petitions based on regional centers received on January 20, 2018, and that it will suspend processing pending regional center-based I-526 petitions and I-924 applications until the regional center program is reauthorized. The shutdown is still in effect as of Monday morning, January 22.