US Immigration Is Stuck in the Stone Age—and It’s Putting Lives In Danger

[tacobell fan]

When US Customs and Immigration asked Maxine Bayley’s client to send over extra evidence for a green card application in 2018, the Duane Morris LLC immigration attorney sent them the files express.

FedEx confirmed they’d arrived—but the government said it didn’t have them.

Amira Mikhail, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, had a similar problem with a client who had the bad luck of having a dash in her mailing address.

Because USCIS’s internal system couldn’t process the dashes, the agency misprinted its response. The letters bounced, putting her case in jeopardy until Mikhail intervened.

Lost files, poor communication, faulty technology, and seemingly endless delays: federal audits show that Mikhail and Bayley’s experiences weren’t unusual for the agency, which spends $300 million per year on paper and has disastrously mismanaged a 13-year effort to go digital—often leaving immigrants to deal with the consequences.

And what used to be a time-sucking, stress-inducing inconvenience is now a question of visa denials and possible deportation: a new USCIS policyautomatically initiates removal proceedings for many whose applications are denied, which means minor errors—even the agency’s—can have serious consequences. That’s especially threatening for immigrants who lack legal representation and language skills, or who just don’t know how to navigate a convoluted immigration system that runs on hefty application fees.

Mikhail, as counsel, was automatically notified and managed to communicate with USCIS to fix the error. “Imagine a scenario in which the petitioner is not represented by an attorney,” she said. “They’d never get the notice, and they’d get blamed for not responding, or deal with the consequences of not responding: a closed case.”

Even for Bayley’s client, who had a work visa and an attorney, it was an expensive and painful mistake. It was the second time in a row that USCIS had lost track of Bayley’s client’s files. The first time, USCIS notified Bayley, and she couriered more copies down. The second time, it didn’t—forcing the client to open a new case, pay a second round of steep fees, and spend years longer waiting.

“Instead of notifying him,” Bayley said, “they closed his case. And the basis for that denial was that they didn’t receive this document.”

Bayley’s client already had a work visa, safeguarding him from deportation. But immigrants without a safe underlying status—like those whose Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status expires—don’t have that protection. “You could get deported,” Bayley said. “Something like that could have really serious consequences.”

At best, Bayley explained, “you go through that process again, through the immigration courts, which can take years. You pay attorneys’ fees. You pay filing fees. You pay everything again.”

[tacobell fan]

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[Kontekurradu]

andarini ella 10gude inka 

[ARYA]

vammo

[tacobell fan]

4 hours ago, Kontekurradu said:

andarini ella 10gude inka 

koncham alochinchandi saar