Are you confused with the closures of the USCIS offices recently? Are you worried about
your appointment and what's going to happen next? Well, watch this video, and I’ll update
you more. Hello, everybody. My name is Jacob Sapochnick, and I'm an immigration attorney
located in San Diego, California. And in this video, we'll talk about the situation with
USCIS offices closed, what's going to happen next, and what you have to know and should
do about it. First of all, if you’re here for the first time, I encourage you to subscribe
to our channel. Click that bell to be notified. We release videos every single week. If you're
on Instagram or TikTok, make sure you follow us as well. And I have a big announcement
as well. Because of all the confusion, because of what's happening now with COVID-19, we've
created a private group on Facebook, specifically for people that want to learn about immigration,
have questions, and want to be able to ask them in a safe environment. So, we have a
link at the description of this video for the Facebook group, and probably also here.
And I encourage you to join, I want to see you there, interact with you, ask more questions.
And again, like I said, people have more questions that are not able to ask in public comments.
We have this group to be able to answer those questions for you. So, let's dive in right
into this video. So, the USCIS offices originally closed on March 18th. And they were supposed
to be open again on April 1st. That didn't happen. The extension is now until May 3rd.
And so, what that means is that offices for Adjustment of Status, citizenship, biometrics,
and asylum offices are all closed. They're closed for the public so they don't see people
for their safety and for your safety but they're still working. So, if you want to file your
Adjustment of Status, if you want to file your citizenship, you are encouraged to do
so now. Do not stop filing. The immigration citizenship office specifically announced
on their website that they are open. They are working but they're not open to the public.
So, what is going to happen with your appointments? So, anybody that had appointments between
March 18th all through May 3rd, all these appointments are canceled, and they're going
to be rescheduled. So, you don't have to reschedule yourself. You're going to be receiving a notice
from the government with new dates after May 3rd. If your appointments are scheduled after
May 3rd, assume that they are still going on and you have to attend those appointments.
But if the situation will worsen, they're probably going to schedule, and cancel those,
reschedule those as well. What happens about your biometrics? So, biometric appointments
are also canceled and also going to be rescheduled. So, if those appointments happen between March
18th and May 3rd, those are going to be also rescheduled. They also mentioned that if you
have work permits that need to be renewed, they're going to be reusing your old biometrics,
they're not going to be requiring those biometrics to renew work permits. So, some of these work
permits can be renewed without biometrics, if they need to be renewed right now. But
anything else, you don't have to worry about a rescheduling. The only thing you have to
reschedule itself is if you had an Infopass appointment to go for an inquiry, or check
on your case, or try to renew, or get a stamp on your passport. If you had an Infopass appointment
scheduled during this time, it's canceled. You have to reschedule that yourself. That's
the only thing you have to reschedule yourself but everything else, you're going to get new
notices to appear for the appointment. So, people ask me, “So what I do now? Do we
just wait and not file the cases?” No, you should file cases now because they're still
working. If you file for your citizenship, you can file it online. If you have a test
coming up and you're waiting for your appointment for your oath ceremony or if you're waiting
for your interview, keep studying right now for your citizen appointment. If you are supposed
to go for a marriage green card interview, prepare your documents, keep it [inaudible]
because they may open new appointments following late May, beginning of June. You want to be
prepared for that but do not stop filing your cases. So, this is the situation right now.
Immigration offices are closed for a moment until May 3rd. Appointments will be rescheduled
automatically, you don't have to reschedule appointments for citizenship, and [inaudible]
will also be rescheduled. They are closed to the public but they are still working so
you can still file your cases, do not stop. And this is pretty much all we know right
now. Once we have new information as far as when the new dates are going to be reopening
and what's going to happen when new appointments, then we'll make another video to update you
but this is the most important information. People are confused about it. They don't know
if… another thing that we anticipate is that there's going to be a lot of delays.
Once they're going to reopen, there's going to be severe delays for citizenship appointments,
for marriage green card interviews, and for just processing cases, in general. Getting
your work permits are going to take, instead of four months, it may take eight months.
So, prepare for delays and just be patient. So, this is the update we have for the moment.
And once we have some more information, we'll make some more videos and keep you posted.
So, thanks for watching. Once again, if you’re here for the first time, please subscribe
to our channel and click that bell to be notified. We're making videos every single week. And
don't forget, we have created this new Facebook group to engage with you, to answer questions.
It's all free. We have live videos every week. And I want to see you there as well. So, click
the link below and join our Facebook group as well. So, thank you for watching, and we'll
see you in our next video.