Immigration

On his first day of office, President Biden unveiled and sent his immigration reform bill, titled the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, to Congress. In unveiling the new bill, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters:   “[T]oday President Biden sent an immigration bill to Congress. The U.S. Citizenship Act modernizes our immigration system. It provides hard-working people who have […]

On Monday, November 30, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order that upholds U.S. Department of Homeland Security rules providing F-1 Optional Practical Training (OPT) work authorization eligibility for F-1 students and 24-month STEM OPT extensions of work authorization for F-1 students who graduated from qualifying STEM degree […]

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the scheduled furlough of more than 13,000 employees has been cancelled and that it expects to be able to maintain operations through September 30, 2020, the end of the fiscal year.  The averted August 30, 2020 furlough would have impacted nearly 70% of the workforce at USCIS and likely would have slowed U.S. immigration […]

In the past two years, there have been many changes in U.S. asylum law that have had a negative impact on asylum seekers. On January 25, 2019, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) did nothing to protect the migrants. On the contrary, it made it more difficult for individuals to apply for asylum. Thousands of asylum seekers arriving from Latin American countries without prior authorization to enter the United States, who were immediately placed in […]