USCIS announced that they’re requesting public input on how USCIS can reduce administrative and other barriers and burdens within its regulations and policies. On February 2nd of 2021, President Biden signed an order requesting that we restore faith in our legal immigration system and return back to the ideals and the understanding that we are a nation of immigrants.
It’s so important that USCIS be an agency of customer service that helps people navigate the immigration process and doesn’t create additional barriers and hurdles. In that order, he asked to take a look at everything that’s going on in our immigration system. See what’s broken, what’s working and what’s not. Then, start fixing things and remove these barriers and burdens.
After that, USCIS has made an announcement. That announcement is in the Federal Register on how you can make your voice be heard and make a comment. Basically, immigration is looking to identify barriers across US citizenship and immigration services and what’s making it difficult for individuals to make it through and navigate the immigration process.
The document has a mistake. It says that comments are to be submitted on or before April 19th of 2021. If you click on the View Correction, you’ll see a box that says, “Sorry, it’s actually May 19th.” There is still time to make a formal comment. Share your opinion and don’t let that date deter you.
They are asking for details, anything regarding your personal experiences with immigration. Things that you want to see fixed. There have been many comments so far. We need more. We need to have lots of comments so immigration knows.
The process for adding a comment is pretty easy. Select Submit a Formal Comment and input information in the box below.
This comment will be public so make sure you don’t put in any sensitive information. But you can definitely share your experience with immigration. For example, you’ve been trying to call USCIS, you can’t get past the robot and how that’s impacting you. You can do it as an individual and put your name or anonymously.
Let anybody know who’s going through the immigration process about that tool and about this opportunity to share your voice with immigration.
Many of you already have your own ideas and opinions about what is broken and not working in immigration from your own personal experiences. But some of the things that members of our team have commented on specifically are the obnoxiously long crisis level processing delays and timelines.
We know that COVID has happened to our world and has really slowed things down but immigration was slow before that. These are crisis level delays and we need to have a solution. We need more people and need things to be moving because families are being separated for long periods of time.
In our comments, we’ve talked about how work permits are legally supposed to be issued in 90 days for individuals who are adjusting status. Wait times to receive work permits have well exceeded six months which is an insane amount of time for someone to be in limbo.
We have also talked about in our comments that we need to be able to have an open line of communication with immigration. When you call USCIS, it is very hard to get past the robot. It’s so frustrating. It is vital to be able to talk to a live human being to get information about your case.
People need to be able to have an open line of communication with immigration so they know what’s going on with their case. We also have asked that they reinstate an InfoPass appointment. Back in the good old days, which wasn’t that long ago, we used to be able to make appointments online or we could even make a walk-in appointment that day at immigration for emergency situations.
It used to be a lot easier. You used to be able to go online, make an appointment, get in and get your questions answered. You could also do walk-in appointments for emergencies. They’ve eliminated that and it’s quite a labyrinth that you call and have to wait for them to call you back and have to have your phone on you at all times.
We’ve asked that they have an open line of communication and reinstate those InfoPass appointments. Those are just a few ideas for all of you who are going through the immigration process.