U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on Tuesday that it will extend expiring work permits for thousands of immigrants by a year and a half due to backlog in the process.
With the change, it is planned to prevent approximately 260,000 immigrants from losing their work permits within 18 months and to gain time to clear the application queue to USCIS.
USCIS reported that while immigrants applying for work permits would normally be automatically entitled to a 180-day extension, they will receive an automatic 540-day extension under the new regulation.
The pandemic has caused a backlog
USCIS, the agency responsible for immigration paperwork, has been battling backlog in recent years due to budget deficits and slowdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic.
While American employers have struggled to find staff in recent months, the removal of pandemic restrictions across the country has made work permits even more important.
In the new regulation, published online Tuesday, USCIS said that delays in processing applications created a “difficult situation” for applicants who lost their work permits in the process.
The agency reported that most of the work permit applications affected by the extension are made up of asylum seekers, some immigrants seeking permanent residence, and those trying to cancel a deportation order.
The agency noted that processing times for asylum applicants seeking to renew their work permits increased from about seven months in 2017 to about 11 months in 2021.
USCIS President Ur Jaddou said at a Congressional hearing in April that 8.5 million immigration cases were pending. These include those seeking a Green Card and citizenship.
More than half of pending cases take longer than the institution’s normal processing times, Jaddou said.