Posts From March, 2022

WASHINGTON— Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is announcing a trio of efforts to increase efficiency and reduce burdens to the overall legal immigration system. USCIS will set new agency-wide backlog reduction goals, expand premium processing to additional form types, and work to improve timely access to employment authorization documents. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic […]

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is preparing some offices to reopen and resume non-emergency public services on or after June 4. Due to the spread of the coronavirus in 2020, USCIS temporarily suspended routine in-person services at its field offices and application support centers. While certain offices are temporarily closed, USCIS continues to provide limited emergency […]

Posted by Raul Pinto | Mar 17, 2022 | Humanitarian Protection, Refugee Status The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021—as the country’s government was overtaken by the Taliban—led to the chaotic evacuation of thousands of Afghan nationals. The tragic images from Kabul airport last summer of desperate Afghans trying to escape their embattled nation evidenced the dire need […]

To continue to keep our workforce and applicants safe during the COVID-19 pandemic while maintaining efficiency and providing access to the asylum process, USCIS is again extending the temporary final rule requiring use of a USCIS interpreter at affirmative asylum interviews, to March 16, 2023. On March 15, 2022, USCIS published another extension to the temporary final rule (TFR) […]

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine and advanced toward the capital of Kyiv. The invasion has led for calls for humanitarian protections for Ukrainians—both in the United States and abroad—including a new Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation. TPS is a temporary immigration status provided to nationals of a country that […]

A group of investor immigrants filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration claiming it is unlawfully refusing to process their valid visa application and green cards after Congress allowed a major visa program they participated in to lapse. There are more than a dozen plaintiffs in the complaint which was filed in Seattle federal court on […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to clarify the meaning of the “public charge ground of inadmissibility” on February 24. The new guidance will be welcome news for immigrants as well as state governments and immigrant-serving organizations across the country that have worked to combat fear and misinformation around […]