United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has issued a policy memo ordering a hold on all pending immigration benefit applications from nationals of at least 19 countries.
The pause affects a wide range of immigration benefits, including Green cards processing, employment authorizations and work visas.
Asylum and humanitarian benefits for those who applied for asylum adjudications have been frozen, regardless of nationality.
The freeze applies to citizens of 19 countries that were already under partial or full travel restrictions under the relevant proclamation.
Included in the list of 19 countries are Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba. The freeze does not appear to represent a universal halt on all immigration to the U.S. across all nationalities. The freeze is limited to this subset of countries labelled “high-risk.”
For people from those 19 countries with pending applications such as green cards, work visas, citizenship and asylum, processing is now suspended indefinitely.
For people whose applications were already approved, the government is calling for “re-review, possible re-interview, or re-assessment” of those approvals, especially for those who entered the U.S. on or after January 20, 2021.
For employers, this represents a major disruption as far as work-permit renewals, visa extensions, scheduled naturalization ceremonies, etc. are concerned.
The policy appears to be subject to change, media and legal observers warn that more countries may be added in “the near future,” and that there may be “re-review” of prior decisions.
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