September 17, 2001 -The INS has recently announced that all INS Service Centers nationwide will soon "shut down" processing of all pending visa petitions, in order to conduct audits of files in anticipation of the end of the 2001 fiscal year. (NOTE: The INS' Fiscal Year 2001 began on October 1, 2000, and ends on September 30, 2001.) Though I-129 petitions designated for "premium processing" will continue to be processed under published guidelines, all other processing activity will come to a temporary halt on September 21, to last until approximately October 5, 2001. The manual count of all pending petitions is anticipated to be completed by September 29, after which an outside independent auditor will inspect the results of the internal count. The independent auditor is expected to be done by October 5, 2001, whereupon processing of all petitions is expected to resume.

Berry, Appleman & Leiden will provide updates as more news is received.

--Daniel C. Horne, San Francisco Office