- REDUCTION IN THE NUMBER OF INTERVIEWS
- NO REDUCTION IN THE AMOUNT OF PAPERWORK
- NEED FOR ATTORNEY REPRESENTATION IS GREATER NOT LESS
- BIOMETRICS REQUIREMENT IS SCALED BACK
Covid 19 pandemic has brought about significant changes to USCIS and some of these changes have made the agency more efficient and leaner while the jury remains out on the other. The more important question is whether these changes have been better for persons who are applying for a green card or other benefits from USCIS.
It is undeniable that while the pandemic showed us how vulnerable we are to a pandemic. Covid 19 also exposed the deficiencies and overall unpreparedness of many organizations to deal with unexpected circumstances such as once in a century pandemic. USCIS as an agency was caught flatfooted and unprepared to deal with challenges that the pandemic posed. By a year into the pandemic, around March of 2021 times processing times were taking four times as long than it did before. A green card application which typically took about an average of a year to process was now taking 36 months to process especially such as high case volume field offices such as New York City. Work permit which took about six months or less to process started taking eleven months or longer to process at the National benefits Center. The system became so backlogged with cases so much so that it was threatening to cripple USCIS.
USCIS was brought to its knees by the pandemic, and was faced with proposition of either adapting to the new public health crisis or cease to be relevant. Thankfully it chose the former. One of the things that USCIS has done to improve its efficiency is to
- Increase the number of applications that can be filed online. Almost all categories of work permit applications can be field online. This is great, it means that persons that are eligible for a work permit can readily file their application using a computer or better yet using their phone to set up an online account and filing their application online. Please do not forget your password though, if you do you will have a very hard time trying to access your account again.
- USCIS also allows for the submission of affirmative asylum applications online but not defensive one. By failing to allow persons to file their defensive asylum application online USCIS has missed out on an opportunity to be more efficient. The large number of migrants coming into the US are placed in court proceedings- which means that their cases must be heard before an immigration Judge and therefore they cannot file their asylum applications online. They must file paper applications for asylum it therefore means that probably close to one million migrant that entered the US are required to send a paper application to Nebraska Service Center. This is hard to reconcile when one considers that aliens who are not in removal proceedings have arguably a more pressing need to file their asylum application timely is precluded from filing their application online. I am not sure what justification USCIS has made for this distinction.
- During the height of the pandemic USCIS allows attorney’s to appear and represent their clients over the phone. This was great, this allows attorney’s to represent their out of state clients more effectively and helped attorney’s that had more than one client with im interviews with USCIS on one day to represent those clients. Whereby if they attorney had to appear at the Brooklyn Field Office in New York for an interview at 8 am and an interview with another client in Atlanta Georgia at 1pm the attorney could effectively represent that client as well. Now that the threat of the pandemic has lessen USCIS has reverted to its old position of requiring that attorney’s appear in person. This is regressive because one of the objective of the Agency improve the level of transparency and fairness in USCIS adjudication. Attorney’s are facilitators of this. Allowing for their participation in the system is better for the Agency and is best for the client.
- should be to increase applicants attorney access to
- While USCIS
- Allowing affirmative applications to be filed online.
- Allowing attorney’s to represent their clients over the phone rather than in person, borrowing from the Court in this regard.
- Process green card applications even-though those filed by spouses to be adjudicated on the strength of evidence showing that the marriage, waiving interviews
USCIS
like many other instructions bears the scars of its unpreparedness and many persons who had to deal with the agency found themselves often in a battle with the agency just to get through or just have a successful application.
At the height of the pandemic, between March of 2020 and March of 2022,