Earlier this year in February, eighty-six members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) that demanded accountability for the agency’s increasingly lengthy processing delays. Now, USCIS is looking to transfer cases out of overburdened offices to even out processing times across the country. The strategy, however, will only apply to applications for permanent residency (green cards) and applications for naturalization (citizenship).
Read moreThe New York Times: “Trump Administration Plans to Close Key Immigration Operations Abroad.”
Director L. Francis Cissna, of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), recently informed senior staff members that the international division of USCIS operating in more than twenty countries will likely shut down by the end of the year, cutting a key support system for those applying overseas to relocate to the United States. The move to shut down is allegedly intended to provide more resources to handle the lengthy backlog in asylum applications domestically, but it could come at the expense of legal migration.
Read moreNational Law Review: “Slow Immigration Processing Times Draw Criticism and Questions.”
Processing times for immigration cases have dramatically increased in the last few years to “crisis levels under the Trump Administration,” according to an American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) policy brief. These delays in some cases have caused gaps in work authorization and loss of employment, and the same AILA brief notes that the “ballooning delays leave families—including families with US citizen spouses and children—in financial distress, expose protection-seekers to potential harm by bad actors, and threaten the viability of American companies facing workforce gaps.”
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