WASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will schedule asylum interviews for recent applications ahead of older filings, in an attempt to stem the growth of the agency\u2019s asylum backlog.<\/p>\n
USCIS is responsible for overseeing the nation\u2019s legal immigration system, which includes adjudicating asylum claims. The agency currently faces a crisis-level backlog of 311,000 pending asylum cases as of Jan. 21, 2018, making the asylum system increasingly vulnerable to fraud and abuse. This backlog has grown by more than 1750 percent over the last five years, and the rate of new asylum applications has more than tripled.<\/p>\n
To address this problem, USCIS will follow these priorities when scheduling affirmative asylum interviews:<\/p>\n
\t\u2022\tApplications that were scheduled for an interview, but the interview had to be rescheduled at the applicant\u2019s request or the needs of USCIS;<\/p>\n
\t\u2022\tApplications pending 21 days or less since filing; and<\/p>\n
\t\u2022\tAll other pending applications, starting with newer filings and working back toward older filings.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Affirmative Asylum Bulletin issued by USCIS has been discontinued.<\/p>\n
\u201cDelays in the timely processing of asylum applications are detrimental to legitimate asylum seekers,\u201d said USCIS director L. Francis Cissna. \u201cLingering backlogs can be exploited and used to undermine national security and the integrity of the asylum system.\u201d<\/p>\n
This priority approach, first established by the asylum reforms of 1995 and used for 20 years until 2014, seeks to deter those who might try to use the existing backlog as a means to obtain employment authorization. Returning to a \u201clast in, first out\u201d interview schedule will allow USCIS to identify frivolous, fraudulent or otherwise non-meritorious asylum claims earlier and place those individuals into removal proceedings.<\/p>\n
For details on how we will schedule interviews, go to our Affirmative Asylum Interview Scheduling page. (USCIS)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will schedule asylum interviews for recent applications ahead of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[19997,54,1238,119],"class_list":["post-269481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-affirmative-asylum-bulletin","tag-agency","tag-immigration-services","tag-uscis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}