Law360 features Loren Locke discussing the rush by immigration attorneys to file visa applications ahead of policy changes.
From the Article
"Filing October 1st versus October 2nd makes a huge difference, but there's not time between September 24th and September 30 to prepare the [public charge questionnaire]."
Locke Immigration Law's Take
The Law360 piece captured a recurring dynamic in immigration practice: when a regulatory change hits with a fixed effective date, the days immediately preceding that date generate a structurally impossible filing surge. As Loren put it in 2020, "filing October 1st versus October 2nd makes a huge difference, but there's not time between September 24th and September 30 to prepare the [public charge questionnaire]." The compressed-timeline problem isn't a 2020 artifact. It's how regulatory effective dates interact with the underlying preparation a clean filing requires.
Five years later, the pattern keeps recurring. The September 2025 H-1B fee announcement, the recurring TPS expirations, the periodic public-charge rule revisions, and the new EB-1A vetting protocols all produce the same compressed-timeline effect: when the date is set externally and the preparation timeline is fixed by regulatory complexity, the math doesn't close. The 2020 public-charge example was an early instance of a dynamic that's now structural — the regulatory cadence assumes preparation time the practice doesn't actually have.
For clients facing announced regulatory changes in 2026 and beyond, the operational lesson hasn't changed since 2020: pre-build filings for foreseeable categories before the trigger date is announced, not after. Anything that requires a long-lead-time evidentiary record (public charge documentation, EB-1A profile-building, PERM labor certification preparation) should be built ahead of the change cycle, not in the days between announcement and effective date. The compressed-timeline panic is avoidable if the preparation work was already in motion.
Key Takeaways
- The 2020 public-charge rule rush captured a recurring dynamic: when a regulatory change has a fixed effective date, the preparation timeline a clean filing requires often doesn't fit the announcement-to-effect window.
- This pattern has repeated across every regulatory cycle since: H-1B fee changes, TPS expirations, public-charge revisions, EB-1A vetting protocols.
- The structural fix is pre-building filings before the trigger date is announced, not after — anything with long-lead-time evidentiary requirements (PERM, EB-1A, public-charge docs) should be in motion ahead of the change cycle.
- Compressed-timeline panic is avoidable when the preparation work was already underway.