Resources: Elderly Care

Whatever be your age, you may need help regarding care issues of yourself or your elderly relatives. You may approach the folowing organizations for various kinds of help and information:

Support:
Children of Aging Parents 800-227-7294
The Family Caregiver Alliance 800-445-8106
National Shared Housing Resource Center

Government Programs:
The Elderly Locator 800-677-1116
The National Council on The Aging

Legal Help:
The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys 520-881-4005

Financial Advice:
The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors 800-366-2732
The Financial Planning Association 800-282-7526

Estate Planning:
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys 800-846-1555

USCIS Reaches Year 2008 Limit for Cap-Exempt H-1B

United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it has received enough H-1B petitions from foreign nationals who received graduate education in the U.S. to meet the Fiscal Year 2008 congressionally mandated exemption limit of 20,000. The final receipt date for these exempt H-1B petitions was April 30, 2007.

US Businesses use the H-1B program to recruit foreign workers in speciality occupation that require theoretical or technical expertise in speciality fields, like scientists, engineers or computer programmers.

All H-1B petitions that requested the exemption and were received on April 30 will be subjected to a computer generated random selection process. All filings not selected in this process will be rejected and returned to the petitioner, along with the filing fee(s), as long as that petition is not eligible for another H-1B cap exemption. All H-1B petitions requesting this exemption for FY 2008 that were or will be received on or after May 1, 2007 will be rejected by USCIS and returned to the petitioner, along with the filing fee(s), as long as that petition is not eligible for another H-1B cap exemption.

Note that the earliest one may file a petition for either a cap-subject FY 2009 H-1B employee or a cap-exempt petitioner, for a start date of October 1, 2008, will be April 1, 2008. Until then, you will not be able to submit any H-1B petitions for cap-subject petitioners or this particular cap-exempt category of petitioner.

USCIS will, however, continue to accept and adjudicate petitions for current H-1B workers in the following cases: o To change the terms of employment for a current H-1B worker. o To extend the amount of time a current H-1B worker can remain in the United States. o To allow a current H-1B worker to change employers. o To allow a current H-1B worker to work, at the same time, in a second H-1B position.

Victims of Weird Mortgages

Many home-owners are at risk with their adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM) or its variants. Rising interest rates and falling home values are creating an atmosphere of panic among some borrowers who had extended their ability of purchase by selecting such ARM or interest-only mortgages and are now finding their monthly payments at unaffordable level.

But not in all cases the borrowers' greed of possessing a larger home was the sole reason for them to end up in such a miserable state. In many cases, due to heavy-handed salesmanship originating from too much of competetion among loan brokers, inconsistent loan representations regarding the benefits or terms of the loan were made by the brokers. In some cases, unnecessary disclosures which were not required by the law were asked from borrowers at the time of loan origination.

If you feel you might have been led to such a situation for such wrongful business practices, you may consider consulting a consumer-protection attorney. Most consumer-protection attorneys offer a free consultation. If you have a case, you may be charged up to one-third of any benefit obtained through the lawsuit. Some state and federal consumer protection laws provide that the lender, if it loses, pay attorney fees. To find a consumer protection attorney in your area, visit the website of National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), a nationwide organization of more than 1000 attorneys who represent and have represented hundreds of thousands of consumers victimized by fraudulent, abusive and predatory business practices.