Immigration Status
Immigration Status: Change of Status and Maintaining Status
Changing status, keeping it current, and fixing it when something slips, before a small problem becomes a bigger one.
Status changes as life changes
A person's immigration status is not one fixed thing; it moves as life moves. A student becomes an OPT worker. An OPT worker moves to H-1B. A visitor decides to extend a stay. A spouse's status shifts with a marriage or a divorce. Each of those moves is its own filing, with its own form, its own deadline, and its own rules about what you can and cannot do while the filing is pending. We help clients change status from one classification into another, and we help clients who already hold a status stay inside its rules so that status is not lost by accident. We also field a steady stream of questions about STEM OPT specifically: extension eligibility, and the employment restrictions and reporting obligations that come with it, because that extension catches people off guard more often than any other status question we hear.
The gap between one status ending and the next beginning
The riskiest moment in most status questions is rarely the filing itself. It is the gap: the period after one status ends and before the next is approved, or the period after a job ends while a work-authorized status still depends on that job continuing. Working, or simply remaining, outside what your status permits, even briefly, can affect a later visa or green card application in ways that are not always obvious at the time. If you are not sure whether a change in your situation, a new job, a school transfer, a gap in enrollment, a change in a relationship, has already affected your status, that is exactly the kind of question worth asking before it becomes a problem rather than after. We review where things stand, tell you plainly whether there is an issue, and lay out the filing that addresses it if there is one.
Ghoshal Law answers status questions as often as filing ones: change of status, maintaining status, STEM OPT and the employment restrictions that come with it. Call (512) 456-3536 before a gap becomes a problem.
Where status questions come from
Four situations we see most often.
Form I-539
Change of status
Moving from one nonimmigrant classification to another without leaving the country, such as a visitor extending a stay or a dependent's status shifting with a change in the primary applicant's case.
Ongoing
Maintaining status
Staying inside the terms of the status you already hold: work, study or reporting rules that, if missed, can put a later filing at risk even when nothing about your intentions has changed.
STEM OPT
Employment restrictions
STEM OPT extension eligibility, employer and self-reporting obligations, and what kind of work counts toward the extension. One of the questions we field most.
Before it compounds
When something slips
A missed deadline, a job that ended sooner than expected, a gap nobody flagged at the time. We assess where things actually stand and what, if anything, can be done to address it.
This page describes our practice generally and is not legal advice for your specific situation. Nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship.