Potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are facing expiring work permits, or whose work permits have recently expired, can continue to use this documentation for a period of up to nearly 18 months, the Biden administration announced this week.
While many immigrants receive an automatic 180-day extension when their work permits expire, immense immigration backlogs have still put some out of work. Under the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) change announced on Tuesday, the automatic extension period will now be lengthened to up to 540 days.
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“As USCIS works to address pending [Employment Authorization Documents] caseloads, the agency has determined that the current 180-day automatic extension for employment authorization is currently insufficient,” USCIS Director Ur Jaddou said. “This temporary rule will provide those noncitizens otherwise eligible for the automatic extension an opportunity to maintain employment and provide critical support for their families, while avoiding further disruption for U.S. employers.”
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The new policy should aid asylum-seekers like Biraj Nepal and their employers. He told Vox in February that he had to take an unpaid leave from his job of four years because USCIS hadn’t yet processed his renewal. “It only takes about 12 minutes for an official to review an application for a work permit, but an overstretched USCIS still hasn’t been able to keep up,” the report said. Nepal called the delays “a critical situation.”
“I’m in a financial crisis,” he said in the report. “We are being punished by the government without doing any crime.”
The Migration Policy Institute said that USCIS’ backlog “has surged from 5.7 million applications at the end of FY 2019 to about 9.5 million as of February,” worsened by both the previous administration’s anti-immigrant hatred and the pandemic. USCIS is an agency that helps facilitate legal immigration, so of course the insurrectionist Trump administration was determined to burn it to the ground. It also saw COVID-19 as a way to aid that effort.
The current administration said the lengthened extension for some “will allow USCIS an opportunity to address staffing shortages, implement additional efficiencies, and meet Director Jaddou’s recently announced goal of achieving a three-month cycle time for EAD applications (generally comparable to a median three-month processing time) by the end of FY23.”
The change goes into effect today, May 4. In a related change, the administration announced last summer that it was expanding access to work permits for some immigrants who are in the process of applying for a U-visa, which aids the undocumented victims of crime who work with law enforcement. Because of bureaucratic delays, applicants had also faced significant waits. Dream Big Nevada deputy director and U-visa recipient Dulce Valencia called the administration’s expansion of work permits “tremendous news,” citing the long process she endured.
“My U-Visa has been life changing but the process itself took many years. This news renews my faith that times are changing for the better and gives me hope that the hundreds of thousands of immigrants currently waiting will soon be able to benefit from this life changing programs,” she said a the time.
More recently, USCIS said it was also expanding which applications can be more quickly processed for an additional fee (though the higher costs may shut out lower-income immigrants).
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