I'm attorney Desiree with Immigration for Couples. Welcome to our weekly live attorney chat. If you
are new to our firm, you may not know that we weekly do these attorney chats and sometimes even
more regularly if there are things that are coming up in the immigration world that we feel like you
should know about it. We weekly come on here and just kind of give a little snapshot of either
new developments or things that we're hearing with clients during our consultations or just
questions even on our Facebook page as well. If you are watching this live and you have questions,
feel free to comment as we go through these and then we will try to get to those questions
today and then if not, I can always come back and do them as a separate live video as well
because if you have that question, somebody else probably does also. Today, I'd like to discuss the
work permit and travel documents and what those processing times are looking like in late 2020.
Backing up a little bit for our clients which most of the time we're talking about fiancé visas or
travel documents and work permits that are applied for as part of an adjustment of status
application. When people are coming to the US after receiving their fiancé visa
or they've applied for that work authorization concurrently with their adjustment of status,
they are kind of in this limbo of waiting for their ability to travel home and the ability
to work. A lot of times, this is probably the most frequent hardship that I hear from clients.
Wanting to be able to go home and wanting to be able to participate and help support their family.
I wanted to discuss the timelines a little bit because over the summer,
we actually saw timelines drop a bit from the kind of expansive
burgeoning of those timelines that we saw through COVID and the backlogs that to USCIS had
now over the summer, we saw them go down a bit. We were getting work authorizations within that eight
months or so and maybe even less especially if it was part of an adjustment of status
application as well. They were filed concurrently, meaning together. In some ways, you can do that.
Now, we are unfortunately seeing those timelines go up again and sometimes we
will see the work authorization and the travel document issued more quickly with a pending I-485
or adjustment application especially if those have been concurrently filed but not always.
Again, there are many different processing centers. USCIS decides which processing center.
There is no way for us to pick that. We don't get a choice and honestly, there's only one really
that is processing much more quickly than the others. All the other ones are averaging around 14
months or so. You are looking at a year right now or more before getting a work authorization and
travel document. Now this doesn't mean that there aren't remedies. If a specific situation comes up,
there are tools in our tool belt that we can use to speed up a process if you fit into
certain categories. If you have a special situation, you should contact our office
and we can assist you with whether or not you qualify for one of those additional elements.
But know that they're more the rarity and they are the exception so it's going to be something
that's a special situation that we would want to apply for that but just the normal work permit and
travel document unfortunately are taking a little over a year right now and so you're kind of in for
the long haul with both of those documents and I know that those are a value to our clients.
I hope this has been helpful for you to kind of understand those two documents,
the processing times for this kind of late 2022, and if you did find this helpful
please feel free to like and comment on our Facebook page. Maybe share it with
others that you know of that might find this also helpful also you can subscribe to our
YouTube channel to get more information, lots of resources, lots of videos there as well as
on our resources tab on our website immigrationfor couples.com. If you are watching this on replay,
please comment hashtag replay and I will see you here in two weeks because of the
holiday for our next live attorney chat on Thursday. Have a great day!