Author: Adrianna Romero

On September 30, 2021, USCIS issued a memo outlining the Biden administration’s new immigration enforcement policies. The memo makes it clear that ICE agents are to prioritize the detention or deportation of those suspected of terrorism or pose a national threat to the U.S. Undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes or are recent arrivals (entered the U.S. after November 1, 2020) are also among the priority list for ICE.

After the policy goes into effect on November 29, 2021, ICE agents will not detain undocumented immigrations merely because of their immigration status. Instead, ICE agents will use their limited resources and discretion to pursue undocumented immigrants who may be a threat to border security, public safety, and national security. Undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for an extended period of time and can show they satisfy any of the enumerated mitigating factors are not a priority for deportation. While this policy may be a sigh of relief for millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., they are still living in limbo while they wait for a path to work authorization, legal status, and citizenship.

H-2B visas are temporary employment-based visas available to non-agricultural employees. H-2B petitions are filed by employers who need seasonal or one-time help because they are unable to find U.S. workers who are able, wiling, or qualified to do temporary work.

Together the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security have authorized the addition of 22,000 H-2B visas to help businesses affected by COVID and will suffer irreparable harm if they cannot hire H-2B workers. 6,000 of those additional visas will be reserved for workers from the Northern Triangle (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador).

This is a one-time increase in visa numbers that will expire in September 2021.

As states implement new methods with the intention of making it easier for their residents to vote, they have unintentionally made it more difficult for Lawful Permanent Residents to naturalize and even put them at risk of deportation.

One of the most unforgiving violations of U.S. immigration law is to falsely claim to be a U.S citizen. A false U.S. citizen claim will make a foreign national inadmissible and deportable, and it is nearly impossible to overcome this violation. Upon adjusting their status, Lawful Permanent Residents are carefully advised by attorneys to avoid false claims to U.S. citizenship.

Many states have included the opportunity to register vote with their DMV applications and other state benefit application. While some of these applications ask the applicant to indicate whether they are U.S. citizens, many do not.   

As a result, applicants are unknowingly registering to vote after signing these forms. This presents a complication for Lawful Permanent Residents when they apply to naturalize and USCIS notices they are registered to vote. USCIS had previously determined that a Lawful Permanent Resident who registered to vote, intentionally or otherwise, can be denied U.S. citizenship by alleging that they either falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen or they do not meet the “good moral character” requirement to warrant an approval.

USCIS recently updated its policy on this topic. USCIS will not penalize those who unknowingly or unlawfully registered to vote, and will not consider an applicant to have unlawfully registered to vote if they did not complete or sign the voter registration portion of a state benefit application. If an applicant did register to vote, USCIS will not consider it a false claim to U.S. citizenship if the registration form did not contain a question about citizenship, and if it did, the applicant did not affirmatively indicate they were a U.S. citizen. However, the burden is on the applicant to prove the question did not exist or that they did not answer in the affirmative. If the applicant answered in the affirmative, they may be denied immigration benefits based on a false claim to citizenship or lack of “good moral character”.

In sum, Lawful Permanent Residents who are unknowingly registered to vote can still be eligible to naturalize, but they need to prove they did not mean to register and they did not affirm they were U.S. citizens.

The new policy is effective immediately and USCIS will accept comments until June 28, 2021.

On February 18, 2021, the U.S. Citizenship Act was formally introduced to Congress. The proposed bill calls for comprehensive reform to all areas of immigration law. President Biden declared on this first day in office that he intended to “restore humanity and American values to our immigration system”. The massive, 353-page bill, proposes innovative solutions to the current and outdated immigration framework that has failed to keep up with the country’s needs.

The bill provides for a pathway to permanent residency and eventually citizenship for those with DACA, TPS or H-2A status.

With the goal of stimulating economic and scientific development, the bill proposes many changes to employment-based immigration including:

• Clearing visa backlogs by increasing per-country caps and exempting Ph.D. graduates working in STEM fields from the green card quota. 
• Prioritizing the distribution of H-1B visas by wage offered by employers.
• Work authorization for H-4 dependants.
• Increasing penalties for employers who violate labor laws.
• Extensions of F-1, H-1B, L-1, and O-1 status if the foreign national has a labor certification or I-140 immigrant visa petition pending for over a year.

While the bill is only in the early stages of the legislative process, it will certainly be subject to debate and revisions in an effort to garner bipartisan support.