Hi, everyone. I wanted to make a quick video with some great news about biometrics appointments
being waived in certain cases. Before I get into all of that great news, I'd like to quickly
introduce myself and our firm if you're new to our YouTube channel. I'm Attorney Megan Pastrana from
Corado-Pastrana, the immigration firm for couples. If you haven't already subscribed to our channel
please do so now. We regularly post updates because we know how important it is for you to have
important educational information and updates as you're navigating through your immigration journey.
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Biometrics appointments being waived. This is the great news.
For those of you who aren't familiar with what a biometrics appointment is, I'd like to give you a little bit of a background of exactly what it is.
In certain applications, and I will speak to applications as it relates to immigration for
couples. That is what we focus on here at our firm.
In certain types of applications, specifically an adjustment of status for individuals who are applying
for their green card here within the United States, removal of conditions and citizenship
in those cases, part of the process is that you'll receive a biometrics notice
to go to a local USCIS office to have your fingerprints taken and for them to take your
information and your photos. Basically, your biometrics, your fingerprints.
So what we're seeing because of Covid happening in 2020, immigration started making
special provisions and taking special steps to limit the amount of exposure people have
to have to each other in the immigration offices and the amount of appointments and
so one of the things they did was they started waiving biometrics appointments.
We're seeing that that's pretty common now and we expect that that will continue here through
2021 because unfortunately no one knows when Covid will end but we see that in the foreseeable future
that that will continue being a common place. That biometrics appointments will continue being waived.
What that means is that if you have recently had your fingerprints taken
by immigration typically within the past year or two for another type of immigration application
For example, individuals who have had filed a removal conditions application and then you're
getting ready to file for your naturalization, they likely have your fingerprints in the
system already. So they would just waive your biometrics appointment for your
naturalization process. If they do that, they'll send you a notification
letting you know your biometrics appointment has been waived and that you won't have
to attend. So that's great news. One less thing for you to have to worry about doing
and like I said, you'll get that notice from immigration letting you know that.
And an important tip, a special tip we want to let you know what we do here in our office for all of
our clients is that we recommend and like I said, what we do for our clients is we send separate
money orders for the government fees. If you look on the USCIS website for adjustment of
status or removal conditions or naturalization, you'll see that they have the government fees
separate and they'll have a separate fee for the $85 biometrics fee. What some people
do is they'll write a check for the naturalization and the biometrics fee altogether
but what we recommend is sending two separate checks or two separate money orders.
One for the application and one for the biometrics fee of $85. Because what we have seen immigration doing
is that if they decide to waive the biometrics appointment, they'll actually return the $85.
That doesn't always happen. Immigration kind of loves to do whatever they want but we have found
if you send the two separate checks, if they decide to waive the appointment that they would return
that government fee of $85 for your biometrics appointment.
Hopefully, that was helpful news and so you can pay attention to that as you're waiting for
your biometrics notice to come or a waiver of your biometrics appointment. Thanks for watching.