Adjustment of Status
Changing Cut Off Dates Leave India EB-3 Applicants in an Immigration Limbo
Annual limits on immigrant visa numbers, combined with processing delays and wasted numbers, mean even longer waits for people to become U.S. permanent residents. In November, the “cut off” date for visa eligibility retrogressed (moved backward in time) for people born in India who are in the employment-based (EB) third… Read More
Attorney General Garland Brings Back Administrative Closure for Immigration Judges
Attorney General Merrick Garland vacated Matter of Castro-Tum on July 15, reviving a key tool to help judges prioritize cases in the overburdened immigration court system and allow people facing deportation to pursue all available paths to legal status. In Matter of Cruz-Valdez, the attorney general reversed a decision… Read More
Trump’s Citizenship Test Scrapped by USCIS Over Politicization and Complexity Concerns
Individuals hoping to become a naturalized American citizen will take a different civics test beginning this week, as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reverts back to a previous version of the test. USCIS has scrapped a 2020 version of the U.S. citizenship test implemented during the final months… Read More
The United States Needs a New Approach to Visas and Immigration Benefits
This article is part of the Moving Forward on Immigration series that explores the future of immigration in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. The Biden administration faces a fundamental challenge in reforming the U.S. immigration system: making the United States more welcoming to immigrants. Part of this effort… Read More
Groups Sue Trump Administration Over Immigration Courts Fee Increases and Access to Justice
The American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Law Center and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s new rule that drastically increases fees across-the-board in immigration proceedings. Read More
USCIS Cancelled Planned Staff Furloughs, But Budgetary Challenges Remain
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) told Congress in May that it was running out of money and would need a $1.2 billion bailout to maintain its operations without major disruptions. The agency threatened to furlough over 13,000 of its staff in the process—a step that would bring the… Read More
USCIS Wastes Time and Money With Increased Vetting in Citizenship Processing
The Trump administration has justified major changes to citizenship processing to “safeguard” the U.S. immigration system from application fraud. Yet the increased vetting has not lowered the number of approvals over the last few years, indicating an absence of fraud. The time it takes to approve those applications, however,… Read More
USCIS Upends the Lives of Immigrants by Refusing to Print Their Work Permits and Green Cards
Update: On August 3, 2020, a federal court in Ohio granted a temporary restraining order requiring USCIS to print a work permit within 7 days for all individuals who had been approved for one. The Trump administration’s full-on assault on the U.S. immigration system has… Read More
U.S. Supreme Court on DACA: Blocks Trump’s Cruel Attempt to Upend the Lives of 650,000 Community Members Across America
The U.S. Supreme Court today blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a critical initiative that has offered deportation protection and work authorization to hundreds of thousands of young people who arrived in the United States as children. Read More
New Report Reveals the Impact of COVID-19 Across the US Immigration System
The American Immigration Council's latest report examines major changes to the U.S. immigration system in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unique challenges the pandemic has created for noncitizens and government agencies. Read More
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