Your weekly summary from the Council

 LATEST ANALYSIS 

• U.S. Citizenship Applicants Are in Limbo Because Their Immigration Files Are Locked in Caves Underground
  
  Thousands of applicants for U.S. citizenship have been waiting for well over a year for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to process their applications. But the problem isn’t the usual bureaucratic red tape. In this case, thousands of paper-based immigration records are locked in man-made caves that USCIS says it can’t access. Read More »
   
• Delays at USCIS Will Hamper Biden’s Actions to Help Foreign Workers and Students in STEM Fields 
  
  The Biden administration recently announced four actions intended to improve immigration “pathways” for noncitizens in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. However, these changes are constrained by the delays at USCIS and congressional limits on immigrant visa numbers. Read More »
   
• Declining Immigration Is Leaving US Jobs Unfilled
  
  The labor shortages currently afflicting many sectors of the U.S. economy are being aggravated by the arrival of fewer and fewer workers from abroad. Although immigration has been slowing since 2016, the biggest declines have occurred since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Read More »

 FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW  

• To help ease the U.S. labor shortage, the Biden administration announced on Friday that it will make 20,000 additional H-2B visas available for foreign, seasonal workers. 
  
  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said 13,500 of the newly available visas will go to people who had H-2B status within the last three years. The remaining 6,500 will be reserved for people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras. This will hopefully open additional pathways for people to receive immigration status.
  
  This fact sheet from the American Immigration Council provides basic information about how H-2B visas—and the employment-based U.S. immigration system as a whole—works.
  
  Read more: Employment-Based Visa Categories in the United States

 ACROSS THE NATION  

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has a troubled history, rife with misconduct and impunity. While the agency’s problematic enforcement tactics usually are associated with the southern U.S. border, its agents operating along the northern border also warrant investigation. 
  
  The American Immigration Council and Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE) filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about CBP’s immigration enforcement activities in northern Ohio— where CBP operates a headquarters near the Canadian border and the agency has been tight-lipped about its operations there.
  
  Read more: CBP Faces FOIA Lawsuit for Failing to Disclose Information About Border Patrol Practices in Ohio

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 QUOTE OF THE WEEK 

“With Congress not making any major changes in the immigration space right now, regulations are often the best way to make lasting change in the way the laws are interpreted within the department.”

–  Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council

 FURTHER READING 

• Courthouse News Service: One way out: How the perilous quest for asylum becomes a migrant’s ‘safest option’
   

• PBS (Rocky Mountain): Protection from deportation granted to five Colorado immigrants in sanctuary
   

• The Catholic Transcript: US allows more foreign students to work to support economy

         

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