Asylum: Think Twice Before Applying

From now on, the USCIS asylum division will give priority to the most recently filed applications when scheduling asylum interviews. This is against the first-in-first-out policy. The goal is for USCIS to interview all asylum applicants within 21 days of filing. Their hope is that this will reduce the number of frivolous or fraudulent asylum applicants as some use the asylum backlogs to obtain employment authorization since they take a very long time to adjudicate. The government is doing this to discourage asylum applicants so that they won’t file.

A 21st Century Love Story

Leo and Luis met online back in 2014. They spent months talking, getting to know each other and learning about each other’s families, life goals and values. Thanks to apps like Whatsapp, Skype and others, technology helped them to keep in close communication and grow their relationship. They lost contact for a few months and reconnected early in 2017. Last August, they arranged to meet in Aruba, after their close relationship grew and blossomed. When they met in person, the magic chemistry was there. The beautiful relationship that they had been building for the last 3 years went to a higher level and they decided to spend their lives together.

They then came to us to help them through this bureaucratic and lengthy process of bringing a fiancé from abroad. Separation from loved ones while an immigrant visa application is pending can be a very difficult situation because under the law the fiancé has to stay abroad until he or she gets the visa to immigrate. Technology helped them get through these hurdles. Technology has also allowed us to help them and handle their case with ongoing communication and document exchange. Luis lives in Venezuela, so we also used applications like Skype to take advantage of all the possibilities that technology offers to help them with their case.

Immigration applications are now very delayed and unfortunately cases are taking longer to process than they used to. For example, applications that used to take 6 months now take a year or more. This is making a lot of people frustrated. It may be a subtle way of the Trump administration slowing down legal immigration to the U.S. without an act of Congress since they cannot stop it unless the law changes.