About the biometrics rule being withdrawn. Maybe you don't remember,
so much has happened over the past year. Hard to keep track. That's fine. This is what we do here.
We eat, live, breathe, and sleep. Immigration for Couples. We'll keep you updated
but basically on September 11th of 2020, DHS had made a proposed rule, an announcement
that they were going to expand the rules of who would have to receive biometrics appointments.
The proposed rule had many parts and was much more detailed than that. I want
to back up a little and explain for those of you who might be new to the process what biometrics
appointments are, what the proposed rule was, and what it means that it was withdrawn.
A biometrics appointment is essentially a part of the immigration process for most individuals
where they take your biometrics. They take your fingerprints, your photo, identifying information.
That usually is only for the immigrant. They just want to identify the immigrant.
That's the biometrics appointment. The proposed rule that came out from immigration
that September 11th of 2020 was that they wanted to expand the biometrics appointment.
To also petitioners and that would be United States citizen spouses and lawful permanent
resident spouses and also for sponsors. For those of you who have joint sponsors for your
case, friends and family members, who are a sponsor through the affidavit of support, that proposed
rule said that immigration would be able to take biometrics from these individuals as well.
They were also going to remove the age requirement. They don't usually do biometrics for
children under a certain age. And so, they wanted to remove that age requirement and
take biometrics from everyone. They also wanted to use more DNA tests to prove
relationship. It was just going to be, for lack of a better way to describe it, much more invasive.
That was the proposed rule and on May 7th and I will post this
on the link below from USCIS. On May 7th, immigration said, "We are withdrawing
that proposed rule. We are not going to do biometrics on everybody. We are not going
to ask for all of these additional things from petitioners and joint sponsors."
This is completely in line with the proclamation that came out on February of 2021 from Biden.
The executive order to restore faith in our legal immigration system and that proposed order is long
and I will post the link below. The main point of that order was essentially
that we wanted to restore our faith in the legal immigration system.
We want to be reminded that we are a nation of immigrants and we want to have families
be able to be together and be United. We want to remove barriers that these extra hurdles,
these extra difficulties that that proposed rules like the one from September
11th of 2020 and other rules that just created unnecessary barriers. The president was
saying, "We want to remove these barriers. We don't want to create additional hurdles for
individuals who just want to be together." On May 7th of 2021,
immigration said, "In line with that order from the President, we are not going
to implement that expanded biometrics rule." This is great news because can you imagine
if a petitioner, joint sponsors, children, so many additional people having to be
going in for biometrics appointments? Much more invasive and also it's already a system that
has so many people waiting that with limited resources, it would just make it
much more difficult for individuals to get through the process. If you weren't aware
of that proposed rule, now you are. But the good news is they are withdrawing it so that's great.