Sen. Patrick Leahy, D – Vt. just announced that USCIS has agreed to postpone the furloughs of more than 13,000 USCIS employees from August 3 until August 31. However, that doesn’t mean AILA should take the pressure off to ensure that Congress hold USCIS accountable for its budget shortfall.

Next week, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship will be conducting an USCIS oversight hearing. The hearing will consist of a government panel with Joseph Edlow, Deputy Director of USCIS, as well as a non-government panel. The American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Director of Government Relations, Shev Dalal-Dheini, will be testifying in the non-government panel, along with Doug Rand of Boundless, Michael Knowles, President of AFGE Local 1924, the local USCIS labor union, and Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies.

The hearing will address the USCIS’s alleged budget shortfalls which threaten USCIS’s operations and the livelihood of the more than 13,000 USCIS employees who have been issued furlough notices. While the effective date of these furloughs has been postponed to August 31, the financial wellbeing of these employees, as well as the viability of USCIS is still very much on the line if Congress does not act.