- President Biden must address this migrant crisis
if he wants to make any significant progress
on his immigration agenda while he is still in office.
I have some important immigration news for you today.
In an attempt to remove barriers to legal immigration,
USCIS has announced several important policy changes
designed to improve operations.
Also, the number of migrants
arriving at the southern border has increased,
creating a humanitarian crisis and a massive court backlog.
As the situation worsens, it has the potential
to significantly impact immigration reform
from passing in the Biden Administration.
We are going to cover all the details right now,
so make sure you stay tuned until the very end
to see how this can potentially impact your case.
And I spent a lotta time putting this video together,
so please support me in the growth of my channel.
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So, what's the good news about the USCIS policy changes?
What does it mean for immigrants?
Even though major immigration bills
remain stuck in Congress,
the Biden Administration has still been doing what it can
to improve legal immigration
by setting expectations for government agencies to follow.
As an example, back in February,
President Biden issued Executive Order 14012,
which instructed all agencies to "identify barriers
"that impede access to immigration benefits
"and fair, efficient adjudications of these benefits
"and make recommendations on how to remove these barriers."
Over the past several months,
we have seen major examples of government agencies
updating their legal policies to comply with this order.
And just this last week,
we saw three more policy changes at USCIS,
including an update to their expedited processing criteria,
improved guidance on Requests For Evidence,
and an increased validity period for certain work permits,
also known as Employment Authorization Documents,
or known as EADs.
Let's take a look at each of these changes
and what it could mean for your case.
First, the update to expedited processing criteria
reestablished emergencies as one of the reasons
for expediting immigration benefits.
Some of these other situations
that qualify for expedited processing include
severe financial loss to a company or person,
travel for medical treatment and humanitarian reasons,
work for certain nonprofit organizations,
anything that serves US government interests,
and any clear USCIS error.
These clear criteria will help immigration officers
judge requests for faster processing.
Second, improvements to the policies
for Requests For Evidence and Notices of Intent to Deny,
otherwise known as RFEs and NOIDs,
reverses a Trump-era rule set in 2018.
The memo previously allowed immigration officers
to deny immediately incomplete or ineligible applications
without first issuing an RFE or an NOID.
Going forward, if you make a mistake on your application
and the officer believes they just need
more information to proceed,
you will receive a Request For Evidence
instead of automatically having your case denied.
This is great news
because this should significantly decrease
the number of denials issued by USCIS.
And third, the validity period
of Employment Authorization Documents, known as EADs,
is now being increased from one year to two years by USCIS.
This will be available for persons
with pending Adjustment of Status applications,
otherwise known as I-485s.
This is being done to reduce
the number of employment authorization requests
USCIS has to process,
which will then allow them to focus on other priorities.
Last year alone,
USCIS received nearly 370,000 work permit renewal requests,
all of which took significant
and unnecessary time to process.
This change in the policy is due to the ongoing delays
for adjustment of status applications.
Currently, the average processing time
for an I-485 Adjustment of Status application is 13 months.
The hope is that by increasing the validity period
of work permits from one year to two years
will then reduce the number of work permit renewal requests,
which will then free up the resources that USCIS has
to properly adjudicate other applications.
And in this way, they hope to reduce
processing times overall.
For those who want to learn more,
I will include links below in my description.
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Next, what is going on with the migrant border crisis
and what does it mean for immigration reform in the US?
If you watch my channel, then you will know already
that we have a visa backlog at the US embassies
and the National Visa Center.
There are currently around 500,000 cases
that are ready for interviews but are not yet scheduled.
In addition to that visa backlog,
there is a second backlog of migrant asylum cases
that is almost three times larger,
with 1.3 million cases that must be adjudicated
by immigration judges.
To put that in perspective, this number of outstanding cases
is twice the size that it was in 2017.
As we will discuss today,
this has turned into a humanitarian crisis
and it is also being used by Republicans in Congress
to avoid passing any meaningful immigration legislation.
If you are waiting for immigration reform,
then it is important for you to understand
the political implications of this border crisis.
President Biden must address this migrant crisis
if he wants to make any significant progress
on his immigration agenda while he is still in office.
So, what is the most recent news of this asylum backlog?
There has been a historic increase in migration,
with 180,000 migrants arriving at the southern border
just last month.
This is the largest number it has ever been in two decades,
and the number is growing.
Many of these migrants end up in immigration court,
contributing to the 1.3-million-case backlog
that is already there and putting increased pressure
on the 500 immigration judges nationwide.
The wait time for these backlogged cases
is now more than four years,
and there is increasing political pressure
on judges to deport asylum seekers,
which can be a death sentence for many.
So, what is President Biden doing to address this situation?
As we discussed in last week's video,
Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Mexico
and Guatemala recently,
where she told potential migrants not to come to the US.
President Biden has also requested to increase the budget
to hire 100 additional immigration judges and just days ago
authorized $46 million in emergency funding
to address "unexpected urgent refugee and migration needs."
During the Trump Administration,
the CDC passed Title 42, which allowed the US government
to quickly expel migrants
to prevent cross-border spreading of the pandemic.
Rather than ending this controversial policy,
Biden is continuing to use it
to deny asylum seekers procedures into the US.
It has also been reported the Biden Administration
is considering an immigration policy that will allow it
to fast-track deportations of families
who cross across together illegally
from Mexico to the United States.
The president needs to be more careful now
in how he approaches this urgent situation.
Failing to address the crisis will make the situation worse,
but implementing the wrong preventative measures
will destroy his political support.
What do you think?
Do you think that President Biden
is handling this correctly?
What are the right steps that he should take
to assist migrants trying to come into the US
to seek asylum?
Leave me a comment below and let me know.
If you aren't familiar with the visa backlog,
click here to watch my video from last week
discussing the situation, where I summarize information
released directly from the Department of State.
I will continue releasing more videos
as more news becomes available,
so make sure you stay tuned.
And subscribe to my channel
and make sure you hit that notification bell.
Check out this video, and I'll see you there.