Homeland Security’s citizenship agency finalized a new rule Friday that will give officers more time to review work permit applications for those seeking asylum.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says right now, under a court-imposed policy, it has just 30 days to decide whether to issue work documents to asylum-seekers.
The new rule, posted online Friday and scheduled to be published in the Federal Register next week, lifts that cap, which USCIS said will give it more time to vet applications for fraud or national security flags.
Some asylum-seekers may wait longer under the new rule, but the agency said it will no longer have to short-change other work to meet the 30-day deadline for asylum-seekers’ applications.
“This change will reduce opportunities for fraud and protect the security-related processes we undertake for each employment authorization application, thereby increasing the integrity of immigration benefits,” said Joseph Edlow, the agency’s deputy director for policy.
In the rule, published Friday morning, USCIS acknowledged the delays will leave some asylum-seekers unable to hold jobs for longer periods, which could also leave businesses in the lurch. And the government will lose up to $118 million a year in tax revenue because of that.
USCIS says the 30-day time frame is a relic of decades ago, in the pre-9/11 era, and just isn’t realistic now, given the current high level of asylum applications, the need for more security checks, and other work the agency does.
As of February, the backlog of affirmative asylum petitions was nearly 340,000, and the agency handled 556,996 new and renewal work permit requests from migrants with pending asylum cases last year.
Asylum-seekers are migrants who ask for humanitarian protection from within the U.S. They are similar to refugees, who request protection while outside the U.S.
Under the law, asylum-seekers can get work permits if they’ve been waiting for at least 180 days.
USCIS had previously published the rule as a draft and had gone through a comment period, as required by procedural law. Some comments were supportive of the goal, while others were harshly critical, including suggesting the rule was racist or discriminatory toward Central Americans.
USCIS countered that the policy applied equally to all asylum-seekers.
The agency said that it did manage to process 97% of work permit applications last year within the 30-day limit, but that meant it was diverting manpower from other priorities.
“This is not sustainable or fair to other benefit requestors,” the agency said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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