DHS Proposes Registration Fee for Petitioners Seeking to File H-1B Cap-Subject Petitions
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a proposed rule which will require a $10 fee for each electronic registration that petitioners seeking to file H-1B cap-subject petitions submit to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Justifying the fee, DHS stated USCIS’ funding for implementing and maintaining the H-1B registration system comes from adjudication and naturalization fees.
Public comments regarding this rule will be accepted between September 4 and October 4, 2019.
For more information, view the proposed rule from DHS.
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Funding Taken from Military Schools and Daycare to Fund Border Wall
127 defense Department projects, including schools and daycare centers designated for military families will have their funding cut, as the result of a recent decision by the Trump administration to utilize this funding to support the construction of the border wall along the Mexico and United States border. Declaring a national emergency earlier this year to justify accessing funds from the military construction project for use in the border wall construction, this most recent redistribution of funds will affect schools for United States military members in Kentucky, Germany, and Japan, as well as a daycare center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
In addition to this recent redistribution, projects including roads, maintenance shops, equipment storage buildings and hazardous material warehouses will also receive budgetary cuts.
For more information, view the full article from Reuters.
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USCIS Proposes More Effective and Efficient Processing of Work Authorization Requests for Asylum Applicants
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced a proposed regulation which would change the 30-day timeline which has been in place for more than 20 years. Citing a need to improve efficiency and effectiveness of processing employment authorization documents (EADs) in order to allow time for the additional requirements which are now included in the background screening and vetting procedures which were absent when the 30-day timeline was initially put in place.
For more information, view the announcement from USCIS.
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Backlog of Immigration Court Cases Exceeds 1 Million
The number of backlogged active immigration court cases surpassed 1 million, a figure which has almost doubled the 516,000 active cases there were when Donald Trump took office in 2017. In contrast to the 1.3 million cases, there are only 450 immigration judges in what many immigration experts describe as a woefully understaffed and overwhelmed court system. Though new immigration judges are being hired at a rapid rate, with such an immense backlog of cases that is only growing larger, it is difficult to envision the courts ever catching up.
For more information, view the full article from US World and News Report.
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