USCIS has dropped their COVID-19 emergency policies and this will impact us the most with regard to telephonic interviews.
They are now or have been in the past always requiring people to be present for interviews, attorneys included. If you wanted to serve as an attorney representing that client or that particular family, we have been able to, throughout COVID, provide that service via telephone.
This may be something that is not as readily available to do or allowing that remains to be seen. But that’s probably the avenue that we’re going to see the most with regard to this new dropping of that emergency protocol.
Obviously, some things might look different as well around the offices if you’re attending interviews and such. All of those grace periods and those things should be coming to an end due to that new recent update.
The second update is the expiration or removal of the 60-day requirement for civil surgeon reports.
Anyone who files for an adjustment of status, whether it’s a familial-based application but you’re applying for that green card to adjusting your status to a green card holder or legal permanent residence, you have to undergo a medical exam. Sometimes, that medical exam is waived if you’ve had one if you came here via fiancé visa.
It used to be that you would get that medical exam last and you would send that in with the application because that medical exam could not be dated more than 60 days. A lot happened in that period of time. We had medical exams be lost, we saw the adjudication times just balloon and that caused some of those medical exams when you submitted them with the application to expire before the application was adjudicated. You’d have to go through the process of getting another medical exam.