by Dan H. Berger, Diane Butler, and Dahlia French

Dahlia M. French is the Managing Director of Immigration Compliance & Services at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. She is the AILA Message Center Moderator (Students & Schools) and a member of AILA’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee. Ms. French received her J.D. from Howard University School of Law in 1993.

Dan Berger is a partner at Curran, Berger & Kludt, and a founding member of the US Alliance of International Entrepreneurs, an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, on the Advisory Board of the Presidents’ Alliance on Immigration & Higher Education, and a member of the USCIS Headquarters liaison committee for the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

Diane Butler is a partner in the Seattle firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, where she focuses on business immigration. Before law school, she graduated from the University of Wyoming, worked on Capitol Hill, then worked in Shanghai for a Canadian law firm. She received her law degree from George Washington University. Diane was a director of the AILA Board of Governors from 2011 – 2020. She has an active cross border practice and enjoys troubleshooting problem cases.

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On April 5, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) introduced a policy mandating that persons in B-1 and B-2 visa status, wanting to change to F-1 or M-1 status, must file a “bridge application” to extend B status until the F or M status was approved. The policy was expanded on February 6, 2018 to apply to all non-immigrant categories seeking F or M change of status.1 The B-2 bridge policy is departure from the prior policy that a timely filed change of status permitted an applicant to remain in the United States without the need to extend the current visa status.

At first blush, the B-2 bridge seems a departure from USCIS’ policy that a timely filed change of status application, places the applicant in a period of stay authorized by the Attorney General and lawfully present in the USA, even if the visa status expires while change of status adjudication is pending. Until 2017, USCIS regularly approved changes of status

Read the full article here: A B-2 Bridge Not Too Far