United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) announced it is implementing the final phase of its expansion of premium processing for Forms I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers, in the EB-1 Multinational Executive and Manager and EB-2 National Interest Waiver (NIW) categories. This final phase is set to commence on January 30, 2023.
Read moreUSCIS Plans to Expand Premium Processing Services
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) plans to “increase efficiency and reduce burdens to the overall legal immigration system” in order to reduce their extensive adjudication backlogs and increased processing times, by expanding the premium processing service to include additional form types.
Read moreThe Washington Post: "Shutdown worsens strain on US immigration system"
The ongoing partial US government shutdown is causing a further strain on US immigration courts as well as creating potential hardships for US Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and other front-line Department of Homeland Security who are considered “essential” workers and must continue to work without pay during the shutdown. Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, says that the federal employees including CBP officers and agriculture inspectors stationed at border crossings and airports are “key to our nation’s security and economic success, and they do not deserve to be treated this way.” CBP agents are taking into custody more than 2,000 migrants per day on average and, with nowhere to detain them, the governments has been releasing hundreds onto the streets in El Paso, Texas, Yuma, Arizona, and other border cities.
Read moreThe Atlantic: “The Thousands of Children Who Go to Immigration Court Alone”
Immigration courtrooms in the San Francisco Bay and surrounding areas have seen an increase of “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) in court for removal proceedings. Most of these children, sometimes as young as four years old, do not have legal representation. In 2017 California had the second highest number of UACs in removal proceedings. While volunteer immigration attorneys, state funding, and organizations that provide legal aid to these immigrant children are more easily accessible in larger cities such as San Francisco, for immigrant children hundreds of miles away in the Central Valley and Fresno County areas, these resources are hard to access. “We’ve seen children from the Central Valley who have been to court four or five times without an attorney,” Katie Annand, managing attorney for the Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) organization, says. “They’ve had to pay $200 each time to get a ride up here for court, so they are coming up to court just to say ‘I don’t have an attorney.’”
Read moreUSCIS: Change of Filing Addresses and Workload Transfers
Every so often, US Citizenship & Immigration Service Centers—located in California, Nebraska, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia—experience lengthy backlogs and delays in processing cases. To balance workloads and “promote timely processing,” USCIS occasionally changes filing addresses for certain petitions to direct cases away from the service centers experiencing these significant delays, as well as transfers cases from center to center. USCIS announced this week they are doing both.
Read moreBehind the News Story: Business Insider: "Instagram Almost Lost One of its Cofounders Because He Couldn't Get a Work Visa"
Instagram is one of the world’s most popular social media networks, known for its easy-to-use interface for sharing photographs. Indeed, in December 2014, the company was valued at $35 billion, according to Citigroup analysts. Back in April 2015, Business Insider published an article claiming that the company “almost lost one of its cofounders because he couldn’t get a work visa.” A native of Brazil, Mike Krieger is a co-founder and the chief technology officer at Instagram. According to the article, Mr. Krieger had difficulty transferring his H-1B visa from his previous employer, Meebo, to Instagram in 2010. The process is said to have taken Mr. Krieger over three months—longer than it took to develop the first version of Instagram! Mr. Krieger said he almost was not able to work at Instagram because of the delay, and the article goes onto conflate Mr. Krieger’s visa delay with the annual H-1B cap and lottery.
Read moreABC News: Immigration Judges Eligible to Retire
ABC News reports that nearly half of the judges in the immigration court system will be eligible for retirement next year:
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation's 59 immigration courts, says the court already has 32 vacancies, contributing to the current backlog of nearly 350,000 cases. Judges are overwhelmed, and immigrants with legitimate asylum claims can spend years in legal limbo.
Retirement could add to the case backlog, and may not be unexpected given the large caseload and that the judges have "no bailiff, no court reporter and aren't guaranteed a court clerk" and that a Georgetown Immigration Law Journal article found immigration judges "exhibited more burnout 'than prison wardens and physicians in busy hospitals.'"