The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has addressed an issue with asylum application backlogs. This week, they announced that asylum interviews will be scheduled by most recent application to older applications. The USCIS has declared the backlog “crisis-level” because as of January 21, 2018, they have 311,000 pending asylum cases. This backlog is an increase of 1750% from five years earlier. It is suspected that the reason for such a large delay is that the number of new applications for individuals seeking asylum has more than tripled.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has created a list of priorities for scheduling the asylum interviews. The priorities are as follows:
- Asylum applications that already had interviews scheduled, however, it needed to be rescheduled either by the applicant or the USCIS
- Asylum applications that were filed less than 21 days ago
- All other asylum applications. Newer filings will have interviews first, working backward to older filings
The reason that newer filings are getting interviewed first is because the USCIS wants to make sure people who truly need asylum in dire situations get it and that potentially fraudulent cases are weeded out systemically. Sometimes, people try and use the asylum system to obtain employment authorization when they don’t truly need asylum. If you have questions about the new system, contact our firm today.
John Sesini is an experienced immigration attorney with offices in Green Bay and Milwaukee Wisconsin. If you have any questions regarding these matters, please contact the Sesini Law Group, S.C. and obtain your initial consultation.