Asylum and Its Discontents in the United States
A new report from the Cato Institute found that USCIS under the Trump Administration has slashed overall Green Card processing by about 50%. Certain categories of Green Card applicants–including asylees and refugees–have been hit much harder.
The reason for the slowdown is not entirely clear, as USCIS has been reticent to share much information about its operations. Today, we’ll talk about what we do know and how asylees and other Green Card applicants are being affected.
Last December, USCIS announced that it had “halted all asylum decisions” until it could “ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.” Various other applications were also halted in the name of national security for individuals from the 39 “banned” countries.
Now, in a rare bit of good news from the Trump Administration, USCIS has issued an update indicating that some holds have been lifted for asylum seekers and others. The Agency has not provide much detail, but here, we’ll see what we can glean from this most recent announcement.
Last summer, the Trump Administration implemented a travel ban to block or restrict nationals from certain countries from entering the United States. The ban was justified based on “national security” or because the targeted countries had higher-than-average visa overstay rates.
Now, according to a report from the New York Times and my conversations with Asylum Officers, it seems that people from banned countries who are already in the U.S. will face additional restrictions on receiving asylum and obtaining a Green Card.
Asylum seekers are eligible for an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) while their application is pending. Although EADs are issued for 5 years, most applicants need to renew their employment authorization because the wait is so long.
Up until last week, if you filed to renew before your current EAD expired, you received an automatic 540-day extension of the current card. This was important, since USCIS often processes renewals slowly, and without the extension, many asylum seekers would lose the ability to work. But now, a new rule has eliminated the automatic EAD extension for asylum seekers (and others), and so when your card expires, you can no longer work lawfully.
Perhaps you’ve heard the rumors–reported in the press but never verified by USCIS–about a “pause” on Green Cards for asylees and refugees. While the exact details of the pause remain unknown, it may have been implemented to give USCIS time to re-evaluate the Green Card process in light of the Trump Administration’s jaundiced view of humanitarian migrants.
Now, a new memo from USCIS clarifies when a Green Card interview is required for asylees and refugees, and seems to signal an end to the pause.
As you probably know, asylum applicants often wait years for their interview or court hearing. Some cases get stronger with time, but most do not. Sometimes, country conditions improve or change in a way that makes it more difficult to win asylum. Other times, the asylum laws or regulations change in a way that is unfavorable. More commonly, the very fact that an applicant has been away from her home country for a long time makes it seem less likely that she will be harmed if she returns. The Immigration Judge or Asylum Officer will want to know why anyone back home would still remember you, let alone want to harm you, after so much time outside the country.
If you’ve been waiting for a long time for your Asylum Office interview or Immigration Court hearing, and you think your case has become weaker, what can you do?
If you are one of the 3+ million people waiting for your case in Immigration Court or at the Asylum Office, you might ask yourself, Why is my case taking so long? Of course you know the basic reason: Too many cases and too few people to work on those cases. But why is the system designed this way? Why can’t we have enough Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers so that cases are processed in a timely manner?
Here’s my theory: The system was purposefully created to make you wait.
On October 27, 2022, a group of torture survivors held a protest outside the Arlington Asylum Office. The protesters were asylum seekers who have been waiting for five years or more for an interview. Their request was simple: Please interview me and give me a decision in my asylum case.
If you are a regular or even occasional reader of this humble blog, you know my opinion of the affirmative asylum system–it is a disaster. There are currently more than 435,000 pending cases, representing upwards of 800,000 people. Some applicants have been waiting for their interviews for five, six, seven or more years, separated from spouses and children and living in existential uncertainty. Now, it seems that we are on the verge of a perfect storm, which will throw tens of thousands of new cases into the system at the same time as resources will be diverted away from affirmative cases. These changes will result in some winners and some losers. Here, we’ll discuss these new developments and how they might affect the asylum process.