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.