USCIS begins requiring interviews for Employment Adjustment Cases
Beginning October 1, 2017, USCIS will require far more people to appear at its offices for in-person interviews, including all employment-based green card applicants as well as asylees and refugees who are petitioning for a spouse or child to join them in the United States.
This is a change that could potentially impact hundreds of thousands of people applying for permanent residence status.
The purpose of the interview requirements is said to root out fraud and protect national security and public safety. However, USCIS has not identified any specific risks or threats that justify the need to delay the process by interviewing those who have cleared rigorous background and security checks and have no fraud indicators.
While it is one thing to focus on illegal immigration, these changes will severely impact legal immigration and will slow down the process and lead to massive processing backlogs that could even result in the systematic shutdown of the U.S. as USCIS just does not have the capacity to conduct interviews for thousands of more people; the resulting delays will hit across the board.
This policy would compound the damage the already unworkable immigration system is doing to our economy, meaning Americans will lose out – this includes individuals, U.S. businesses, local communities, and the national economy.
More Background:
For decades, USCIS has been plagued by lengthy processing times. Naturalization applications can take a year to process. Green card applications routinely take at least a year or more to process, and that is often after the applicant has patiently waited decades in a visa backlog.
While USCIS already has the authority to request an interview when it deems necessary – for specific reasons, waiving the interview for individuals who have already undergone extensive screening and have been successfully living and working in the United States for years makes sense.
These individuals have already been thoroughly vetted and have been deemed to pose no threat to the safety or security of the United States. If a background check reveals an issue, USCIS can call the individual in for an interview. But to require an in-person interview for all applicants seems like a substantial waste of resources.