The Supreme court has taken a partial decision in the travel ban.

The court has said it will hear arguments about the ban later this year, but in the meantime, the court decided that aspects of the travel ban can be enforced. The enforcement is limited to people from the six banned countries who do not have ties to people or entities in the USA (meaning close family ties or relationships with US entities such as job offers/college).

It is FAR TO SOON to know what that means for DV cases. The decision has just been announced and I don’t think even DHS Almost all immigrant cases have the relationships being exempted – i.e. the immigrants have family or employers petitioning for them, so those cases would remain unaffected. However, for refugees and DV cases the position is less clear. I don’t know whether they will accept arguments from DV winners who have family relationships in the US, or whether they will include DV winners in the ban because the reason for the immigrant visa application is not connected to USA based family member or entity. The point is I don’t know. It is too soon for anyone to know. We have to wait to hear clarification.

It is also too soon to guess what impacts this may have to DV2017 or DV2018 cases not affected by the ban. Again, we must wait to get clarification.

 

So – please don’t expect me to answer questions about what this means for any specific cases OR for VB progress, quotas and so on.

 

Some points to answer possible questions:

  • This ONLY affects people from the 6 affected countries  Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
  • This does not apply to existing Green Card holders.
  • The ban previously did not affect people holding issued immigrant visas (i.e. after issued,  before activation).
  • We don’t know when exactly the ban will actually be implemented OR how long it will last.
  • This does not cancel the selection of people from the affected countries, but it could complicate/delay their DV case processing.