As is well stated in this op-ed by a former Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and summarized in this article in The Hill, USCIS must act to prevent nonimmigrants and other work authorized noncitizens, and the organizations that employ them, from being thrown into chaos by the agency’s office closures and suspensions of service delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While in late March, USCIS belatedly took small steps to extend certain response and appeal deadlines related to notices and decisions about individual applications issued between March 1 and May 1, 2020, and to reuse previously submitted biometrics (digital fingerprints) needed to process work permit renewal applications, these measures do not go nearly far enough.
USCIS’s office closures and processing delays put those with nonimmigrant visas and work permits at risk of going out of status. A person who goes out of status for even one day can become completely ineligible to continue in her/his prior legal status, or must leave the U.S. and apply for a new visa at a U.S. consulate abroad – which is currently not possible due to COVID-19 suspensions of visa operations at all U.S. consulates.
USCIS has a variety of existing tools in its arsenal, as outlined in the op-ed, that could compensate for its barriers to and delays in application processing related to its COVID-19 responses, and could inject humanity and provide certainty to legally present noncitizens whose status is at risk of expiring, and to their employers alike.
It’s time for USCIS to go beyond half-measures and take aggressive actions to protect the statuses of these noncitizens automatically for at least a year.