These days, I feel a bit like a broken record: Delay, delay, delay. It’s all I seem to write about (and what I spend much of my work day dealing with). But it is the big issue with asylum cases, both in the Asylum Office and the Immigration Court, and so it is on everyone’s mind. Today I want to talk about delay at the Asylum Office and what can be done about it.
Most recently, the Asylum Office changed its policy and is now interviewing old cases before new cases. This means that new cases will probably take one to two years before the interview. Previously-filed cases will be interviewed in the order that they were received by the Asylum Office. Our oldest backlog cases–filed in April 2013–have just been scheduled for interviews, so we are starting to see the effect of the new policy.
Anyway, let’s get to it. If your case is delayed, what can you do about it? There are several actions you can take to try to get a faster interview date. None of them is guaranteed to work, but–depending on your circumstances–some may be worth a try.
Short List: You can put your case on the “short list.” The short list is a list of people who will be contacted for an interview if another case is canceled. In my local Asylum Office (Virginia), there are approximately 250 cases on the short list. The Asylum Office interviews about 10 such cases per month, so the “short list” is not very short or very fast. When your name is called, you may not have much notice before the interview (for example, the Asylum Office could call you today and tell you to appear for an interview tomorrow). For this reason, when you put your name on the short list, your case should be complete and all documents should be submitted. This is particularly crucial if your Asylum Office–like mine–requires all documents to be submitted at least one week prior to the interview.
Once your name is on the short list, the Asylum Office will eventually contact you for an interview. In the event that you are called, but cannot attend, there is no penalty. However, your name will go to the back of the line, so probably you will not be called again for some time.
The bottom line here is that the short list may be a way to get an earlier interview date, but it is not all that fast. So it is certainly not a perfect solution. On the other hand, there really is no downside to putting your name on the short list, so if you would like to move your case faster, this is a good first step.
Request to Expedite: If you have a medical, family, professional, or other emergency or need, you can ask the Asylum Office to expedite your case. We have had mixed luck with this option. We’ve tried to expedite for several people where they had family members overseas who were facing problems. For most of these cases, the Asylum Office did not expedite, but for a few, it did. We were able to expedite a case where the client had cancer. We’ve also had luck expediting a case where the client needed to obtain status for professional reasons. In short, our success at expediting cases seems to have little relationship to the seriousness of the client’s problem.
If you want to expedite your case, you need to contact the Asylum Office and ask to expedite. You need to explain why you want to expedite and include some evidence–such as a doctor’s note–about the reason you want the case expedited. Again, we’ve had very mixed success with getting our clients’ cases expedited, but there really is no down side to trying.
Congress: You can contact your local Congressional Representative to ask for help with your case. You can find contact information for your local Representative here and for your state’s Senators here. Generally, in my experience, this option has not been effective at getting a faster interview date, but there is no harm in trying. If you have a U.S. citizen friend (or church group or other group) who can make this request for you, it may be more effective.
DHS Ombudsman: You can inquire with the DHS Ombudsman’s office about your case. This office exists to assist people who have problem cases. The Ombudsman’s website is here. I have a high opinion of the Ombudsman’s office, and they do want to help, but I think their ability to make cases go faster is very limited. I doubt they will be able to help make a case faster under ordinary circumstances. But perhaps if you have tried to expedite due to an emergency, and you have not had success, they could assist you.
Mandamus: You can file a Mandamus lawsuit against the Asylum Office. In a Mandamus lawsuit, you sue the Asylum Office and ask the Judge to order the Asylum Office to do its job (process your case). I have never done this, but I have heard about some applicants successfully suing the Asylum Office. Generally, the Asylum Office will not want to waste resources fighting Mandamus suits, so they might agree to process the case rather than fight the lawsuit. As I see it, the two downsides to this are: (1) There is not a strong legal basis to force the Asylum Office to process a person’s case. The regulations generally require asylum cases to be processed in less than six months, but there are broad exceptions to this time frame, and the Asylum Office can rely on those exceptions to process cases more slowly. Although the suits may not be very strong legally, they can still succeed where the Asylum Office would rather interview the applicant than fight the lawsuit; and (2) It can be expensive to hire an attorney to process a Mandamus lawsuit. For applicants who can afford this approach, however, it might offer a way to make things faster (though it will surely not enamor you to the Asylum Office).
To learn more about your options, you may want to contact your local Asylum Office. Contact information about your office can be found here. There is no magic solution to delay at the Asylum Office, but I hope that some of these suggestions will be helpful. If you have had success with these or other ideas, please let us know.
What an important work you do here, giving insights and hope through your posts, moreover – answering people, Jason! I’m amazed. Thank you for that! Is it still effective in Virginia to use Short lists, Congressman’s office help and Expedition requests based on health issues or worsening situation in a home country?
Thank you. There is no short list in Virginia any more. However, you can try to expedite (I wrote about that on March 23, 2022). You can also try to get your Congress person to help you expedite. These days, such requests usually do not work, though once in a while, they do. If the expedite request fails, you can try a mandamus lawsuit. That is how most people seem to get interviews these days. Take care, Jason
Thank you so much for the exceptionally swift response. I am sincerely grateful to you. Can you give me one more piece of advice, please? Today is the last day I should give my answer to a very good job offer. Should we take a job and move to Washington state, having our affirmative asylum case transferred from Arlington to probably San Francisco in the hope of having our case processed in 180 days, or should we stay? We applied affirmatively for asylum in May 2023 in Virginia after the judge terminated our case. We were sent to the court in December 2022. Here, we have a good and respected but not assertive attorney for free. We crossed the southern border by car in October 2022 and asked for asylum at the border control station. We were given the class of admission DT for one year. A family of four with two small children. Thank you!
I am not sure I understand the question, but if you filed affirmatively in May 2023, you should have passed the 180 days, and so you should be eligible for a work permit whether or not you move. In terms of getting an interview, very few new applications are being interviewed, and if the case was filed at the Vetting Center in Atlanta, I have not seen any of those cases get interviewed yet. Finally, in terms of grant rates, San Francisco has the highest approval rate in the US (at least according to the most recent data, which is now a few years old), though if you are in Washington State, your interview will be there – it is a sub office of San Fran, but delays at sub offices are even longer than the main offices. Take care, Jason
[…] they want you to submit. Also, some Asylum Offices have “short lists,” which I discuss here. Email the Asylum Office to ask about this. Below are a couple examples of email expedite requests, […]
helo sir i approved my asylum after 4 months ago in court but i can not received my l-94 form what’s the reason and what can i do for my l-94 form because i applied my family.
Google “post order instructions for immigration court” and you will find a PDF with instructions for the next step. The judge, the ICE attorney or your lawyer should have told you about this when the case was approved, but you can take care of it now. Take care, Jason
Good morning Jason, my asylum case was filed in Chicago 2 years ago and it’s pending. I recently moved to Florida and the USCIS already notified me that they received my change of address. My question is: are they gonna transfer my case to Florida and if so, are they gonna change the ZCH number for a Miami Asylum Office one? Thanks in advance and congratulations for your blog. It’s excelent!
The case should automatically move to FL, but that is probably the busiest office in the US, so you may be waiting for a while. As for the receipt number, I do not think that will change – you can go to http://www.uscis.gov and look at Check Case Status, enter the receipt number, and see what comes up. Take care, Jason
Sir if i geting the appointment with uscic offlice and how to need documents required info pas to uscis and how much time to i receve my l-94 card after the appointment.
Helo sir how are you! Sir my case was approved in court before 2.5 months but i don’t have receve my l-94 card . Please give me advice what can i do
If the case was approved in court, you need to make an appointment with USCIS. You can do that using the Post Order instructions available here: https://www.uscis.gov/laws/immigration-benefits-eoir-removal-proceedings. That should get an I-94. Take care, Jason
Sir if i geting the appointment with uscic offlice and how to need documents required info pas to uscis and how much time to i receve my l-94 card after the appointment.
You have to check the instructions – it tells you what you need, but for sure, you need photo ID, like a passport or EAD, and the order from the Immigration Judge. I think you get the I-94 the same day, but I don’t remember for sure. Take care, Jason
Hello Mr Jason. I filled my case on 17th August 2018. I got an acknowlegment about 2 week later. I went for biometrics a couple of weeks later in September. Unfortunately since then my interview has not yet been sechuled. I went to the aslyum office in VA for inquriary but i did not get any promising feedback. I know of someone who filed his case in April and by September he was all processed. What should i do?
If you filed in August but did not yet get an interview notice, it probably means that your case is in the backlog. I think you will not get an interview any time soon, but you never know (it is still a bit unclear how Arlington is processing backlog cases – the director says they are doing oldest cases if they have extra time, but the LIFO announcement indicated they would do newest cases). You can try to expedite – I wrote about that on March 30, 2017. Take care, Jason
Helo sir how are you sir master hearing is the final hearing in the immigration court and how long to take a final decision..
I describe the Master Calendar Hearing in a post I did on March 7, 2018. That is the first hearing. The second (and usually final) hearing is after that. The time frame varies by judge, but most cases are resolved in 1 to 3 years. Take care, Jason
When did you apply for your asylum if I may ask? How long it took for to go for your interview?
Good day to you Mr Jason, I had my interview on the 19th of June 2018, the officer told me to come on 3rd July 2018 to pick up my decision notice but I was unable to go due to financial constraints but on the letter given to me after the interview states that once my case is granted I will receive my employment authorization document ‘EAD’ 7days after it was granted even though I did not come to pick up the decision notice in which I received my EAD exactly 8days after the interview. The question now is that do I still need to go there to pick up the decision notice or will it be send to me in due time
I would contact them and ask about this. You can find their contact info/email if you follow the link at right called Asylum Office Locator (under Asylum Seeker Resources). I do think you need to get the letter, and I do not know whether they will mail it to you after you did not show up to get it. Anyway, contact them and see what they say. Take care, Jason