Hi everyone! Our firm wanted to get on today to announce an alert that just happened a few
hours ago. USCIS had a policy alert regarding work permits.
And we know this is super important to anyone going through the immigration process.
You're anxiously awaiting your work permit.
And so any changes regarding the work permit is something we definitely want to make sure
that we share. So we basically want to make sure that you get the truth about what this
policy alert really means.
So USCIS has this about two page document that explains in a whole bunch of legal jargon
that they have the discretion to decide whether or not an individual should get their
work permit. But basically, if you're an individual who doesn't practice immigration law,
like all of our attorneys on our team do, the document probably doesn't mean a whole lot
to you or make a whole lot of sense.
And so that's why we want to make sure you have clarity and understanding about what the
document means. So the reality is that immigration loves to release alerts and
information like this to let us know that basically "we can do this," but it's not clear
exactly what they're planning on doing with it.
So with this document, they're basically saying, "Oh, we just wanted to make a policy
alert to let everyone know that we have the ability to decide whether or not somebody
should get a work permit."
And the reality is, is there not a whole lot more than them just making that announcement
that they can make this decision.
It's kind of, we kind of talk about it here in the office, that Immigration is kind of
like a child sometimes on the schoolyard that likes to say, "I can do this because I
can." And that's what they're doing, but it's not clear on how they're planning on
implementing it. What we know is as being experts in immigration and we've focused solely
on practicing immigration for couples and marriage-based immigration.
We know that typically when immigration makes an announcement like this, they're making
this announcement as a preliminary step.
They're letting us know that they can do whatever that they want to do or they think they
can do whatever they want to do.
And then it's a preliminary step to them taking other steps and doing other things.
The reality, though, is that we don't really know how it's going to be implemented.
And so by that, we mean we don't really know what immigration is going to do with this,
because it is a preliminary step.
We've actually our attorneys, when we go to interviews with clients, we know that we hear
officers sometimes say, oh, you know, such and such policy alert was just released, but
they don't even know what it means because they have to train their staff and they have
to explain it to them exactly what what the decision means or what the alert means and
how they're supposed to implement it.
So the reality is, is that for all of our all of our clients, everyone who has
applications pending, nothing has changed in what's being submitted.
So the applications we're submitting.
.. We are not... There's no additional documents required at this time.
There hasn't been any information about how they're going to implement this.
So if you're an individual who has your application filed for adjustment of status and
you have your work permit with that, you might get a request from immigration for more
documents or they they might be just using this policy alert so they can focus their
energy on working on the adjustment applications and not having to make decisions on the
work permit applications.
And because we know that the furloughs will be happening soon with Immigration.
So this might be another reason that they've decided to make this announcement about work
permits so they can focus their energy on working on the actual adjustment application
and not the work permit.
But again, these are all these are all our speculations.
Nobody truly knows.
So you need to be careful on what you read online.
Nobody truly knows how this policy alert is going to impact work permit applications.
And so we always like to be honest at our firm and honest with our clients and honest
with anyone who is using our educational tools or watching our videos that we can make
speculations based on our expertise.
Lots of people will be making speculations, and some of which will not be based on being
immigration attorneys or having expertise.
But we always want to be honest that it's just speculations.
And the reality is we know right now that there's a policy alert.
We know that this is probably a preliminary step.
And we also know that nothing has really changed in terms of the process and what's being
submitted. But we will keep everybody up to date.
We're going to keep an eye on things as we always do every day here, and we'll keep
everybody up to date on any changes.