USCIS recently released some new information to Congress about the affirmative asylum backlog, and–surprise, surprise–the news is not good. The backlog continues to grow at a record-setting pace, meaning that under the agency’s last-in, first-out (LIFO) policy where new cases receive priority over old cases, those waiting for an interview are falling further and further behind. Worse, USCIS has indicated that they do not have the resources to reduce the backlog, and they don’t expect to receive those resources any time soon. (more…)
Here’s a common situation: A person files for asylum at the Asylum Office and her case is pending for years. During that time, she marries someone who does not have immigration status in the U.S., and she wants to add her spouse to her pending asylum application. And here’s another (less common) scenario: A person has a pending asylum application and the person’s child arrives in the United States and wants to join their parent’s case. Today, we’ll discuss how to add a dependent to an existing asylum case. (more…)
If you follow tech news, you probably know about Chat-GPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) program that has been writing college essays, designing buildings, and even crafting condolence emails after mass shootings. Just last week, we learned that this program “can now outperform most law school graduates on the bar exam, the grueling two-day test aspiring attorneys must pass to practice law in the United States.” The test consists of multiple choice and essay questions, and Chat-GPT’s score placed it “in the 90th percentile of actual test takers,” which “is enough to be admitted to practice law in most states.”
Perhaps in an effort to make lawyers feel better, the “National Conference of Bar Examiners, which designs the multiple choice section, said… that attorneys have unique skills gained through education and experience that AI cannot currently match.” “Currently” being the operative word.
While I do not expect to lose my job in the immediate future, I can see areas of immigration law where AI would be able to assist attorneys and increase efficiency. And I can also imagine a future where AI takes over many, if not all, tasks performed by attorneys, Asylum Officers, and Immigration Judges. (more…)
Much has been written about the inconsistent and unpredictable decision-making at our nation’s Asylum Offices and Immigration Courts. And while it is true that the officer or judge who decides the case makes a difference, for most asylum applicants, the strength of the case is the determinant factor. Here, we’ll look at some common reasons why asylum cases get denied, and we’ll explore what can be done to improve your chances for a successful outcome. (more…)
I recently saw a shocking statistic: 76% of cases denied by the Asylum Office and referred to Immigration Court were granted by Immigration Judges. If this number is accurate (and the source–TRAC Immigration–has always been very reliable), it means that IJs essentially overrule Asylum Officer denials in 3 out of 4 cases. Put another way, Immigration Judges are finding that Asylum Officers make the wrong decision in most of their cases. Can this really be true? What’s going on here? (more…)
Growing up gay in Nigeria was dangerous, both physically and psychologically. Despite the obstacles, Edafe Okporo managed to build a life for himself, get an education, and find a job where he helped gay men access healthcare. During his years in Nigeria, Mr. Okporo watched as conditions worsened for members of the LGBT community. The country enacted anti-LGBT legislation, which criminalized homosexuality and encouraged community members to report sexual minorities to the police. In 2016, a mob attacked Mr. Okporo in his home and beat him into unconsciousness, chanting “Gay! Gay! Gay!” The last straw came later that same year when–ironically–Mr. Okporo received recognition for his activism by a U.S.-based NGO. The NGO posted an article about Mr. Okporo online, essentially “outing” him to anyone with an internet connection. He immediately fled his home and fled his country.
In his new book, Asylum–A Memoir & Manifesto, Mr. Okporo recounts his tale of persecution, his escape to America, and his experience with the U.S. asylum system. (more…)
The Biden Administration has proposed new regulations that restrict who is eligible to claim asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The new rules anticipate the end of Title 42, a public-health program that limited the number of people who could seek protection at the border. Advocates have condemned the new measure, labeling it a “transit ban” that is unworkable and a violation of U.S. asylum law. Whether the policy is illegal, I am not sure, but it certainly seems unworkable in the sense that it will likely not deter many asylum seekers from coming to the border to ask for protection.
Here, I want to talk about the new rule, and what impact it might have on asylum seekers at the border and in the interior. (more…)
If you have engaged in criminal conduct in the U.S. or overseas, it could affect your eligibility for asylum in the United States. But how do you know what type of criminality impacts an asylum application? The short answer is that it can be very difficult to determine the effect of a given criminal conviction. Also, even where there is no conviction, in some cases, a person’s eligibility for asylum can be compromised. Indeed, the intersection of criminal and immigration law is a confusing and complicated area, and there exists a whole legal field–known by the portmanteau “crimmigration”–devoted to its study.
It is of course impossible to cover an entire legal field in one blog post, and so here, we will discuss only the basics. But hopefully this will provide enough information to help you determine whether your asylum application is in jeopardy, and whether you need to seek more specific advice from a lawyer. (more…)
I don’t mean to be a Negative Nelly, but why is it that when USCIS tries to make things better, it often creates more problems? The latest difficulty involves a (presumably) well-meaning effort to allow asylees to adjust status (i.e., get their Green Cards) more quickly. The problem is that the memo creating the new policy is confusing, and leaves us (or at least me) wondering about how best to conform to the new system. (more…)
Not long ago, USCIS started accepted the I-589 asylum form online. Of course, I resisted filing online because (1) I don’t like learning new things, (2) I don’t like computers, and (3) I REALLY don’t like learning new things on computers. But I also don’t like waiting (literally) six months for my clients’ asylum receipts, all the while not knowing whether USCIS has lost their application. And so urgency and lawyerly duty have finally overcome inertia, and I filed my first I-589 online.
Here, I want to talk about the process of filing online and give some suggestions for improving the “user experience” (short answer: There are advantages to filing online, but there is also room for improvement). (more…)
Immigration Courts across the U.S. have been randomly rescheduling and advancing cases without regard to attorney availability or whether we have the capacity to complete our cases. The very predictable result of this fiasco is that lawyers are stressed and overworked, our ability to adequately prepare cases has been reduced, and–worst of all–asylum seekers are being deprived of their right to a fair hearing. Besides these obvious consequences, the policy of reshuffling court cases is having other insidious effects that are less visible, but no less damaging. Here, I want to talk about some of the ongoing collateral damage caused by EOIR’s decision to toss aside due process of law in favor of reducing the Immigration Court backlog. (more…)
In response to record numbers of migrants arriving at our Southern border–2.2 million in FY2022–President Biden has announced some new rules designed to deter people from coming to our country to seek asylum. At the same time, these rules also open a new pathway for “up to 30,000 migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti… to enter the United States on ‘parole’ each month if they have financial sponsors here and pass background checks.”
Today, we’ll discuss the import of these new rules. We’ll also look at how the rules might affect asylum seekers who currently have cases before the Asylum Office or Immigration Court. (more…)
Conventional wisdom holds that resettling refugees and asylum seekers is a burden on the host country. Indeed, many of our nation’s immigration policies are based on this premise: We make it difficult for asylum seekers to enter the country; once they are here, their cases often take many years to resolve and in a majority of cases, they are denied; politicians routinely malign asylum seekers as economic parasites, criminals, and terrorists. But why should this be? What is the evidence that refugees and asylum seekers have a negative impact on their host countries?
A new academic paper by Jennifer M. Chacón, Recounting: An Optimistic Account of Migration, challenges the idea that refugees burden their host countries. (more…)
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, Immigration Court is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. Also, some of the chocolate is poison.
For many applicants in Immigration Court, the most important factor in determining success is not the person’s story or the evidence or the quality of their lawyer. It is the judge who is randomly assigned to the case. According to TRAC Immigration, a non-profit that tracks asylum approval rates in Immigration Court, Immigration Judge (“IJ”) approval rates vary widely. For the period 2017 to 2022, asylum approval rates ranged from 0% (a judge in Houston) to 99% (a judge in San Francisco). Of the 635 IJs listed on the TRAC web page, 125 granted asylum in less than 10% of their cases. At the other extreme, nine IJs granted asylum more than 90% of the time.
Based solely on these numbers, there is a 20% chance (1 in 5) that your IJ denies at least 90% of the asylum cases that he adjudicates. That’s pretty frightening. But there is much more to the story, which we will explore below. (more…)
USCIS recently issued its Fiscal Year 2022 report (covering the period from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022). The report discusses USCIS’s efforts to dig itself out of the hole created by the pandemic and the prior Administration, and sets forth plans for the current fiscal year.
There were some positive developments during FY2022 and most of these relate to the immigration agency’s efforts to reduce its various backlogs (though this report does not discuss the asylum backlog) and to address humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine. These developments were made possible with the help of Congress, which appropriated additional funds for USCIS’s mission (USCIS normally receives more than 95% of its funding from customer fees). The agency notes that for FY2023, “Continued congressional support is critical to eliminate current net backlogs and achieve a robust humanitarian mission, while a new fee rule will help prevent the accumulation of additional backlogs in the future.” (more…)