USCIS wants to limit the right of low-income immigrants to receive free services

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) plans to limit access to benefits for its services, which are used by low-income immigrants who apply for US citizenship, green cards and other immigration services.

Photo: facebook.com/uscis

This can lead to problems for tens of thousands of low-income applicants, writes Prospect.

The proposed USCIS policy change, which was published in October 2018 of the year, would completely change the rules introduced by Barack Obama, which weakened the qualification requirements for immigrants to exempt them from paying agency fees.

The types of services that will be affected by the changes range from routine actions, such as replacing a green card or registering a permanent place of residence, to vital issues. Benefits for paying fees may be waived for about 30 application types, including applying for citizenship, legal appeal, obtaining a work permit, and even applications for suspension of deportation.

Despite the critical importance of these applications for immigrants, fees for many have increased dramatically over the past two decades and can often be prohibitive. For example, applying for a green card currently costs $1140, ​​while applying for naturalization costs $725 (in 1989, the application fee for citizenship was $60, which is equivalent to $120 in to the value of the currency in 2017).

In 2016, USCIS approved more than 627 000 immigrant applications for free immigration services, in 2017, this number was reduced to 285 000 applications. Lawyers are worried that restricting these benefits will cause many important immigration services to become an unbearable financial burden for immigrants, leading to an increase in the number of irregularities and refusals to apply for a green card or citizenship.

In 2011, the Obama administration changed the USCIS benefits policy so that immigrants who receive any kind of local or federal benefits, such as Medicaid or food stamps, are eligible for exemption from Immigration fees. If the USCIS proposal is accepted, it will cancel the changes introduced by Obama and limit the distribution of benefits only to those applicants who can show that their income is at or below 150% of the federal poverty threshold.

USCIS believes that restricting eligibility is warranted because some states have their own income requirements for granting benefits that set higher boundaries than federal standards. As a result, according to USCIS, the benefits of paying immigration fees were granted to people who, in a federal assessment, do not meet the poverty threshold.

In other words, because benefit programs in some states (for example, in California) are beyond what the federal government is offering, USCIS now believes that some of the immigrants who receive free services are too rich to receive this benefit.

As an example, consider a family of four in Washington, DC, which earns 54 216 dollars per year, which is roughly 221% of the federal poverty line in 2018. According to state rules, they are eligible to receive benefits, in particular Medicaid, and therefore may also qualify for free services from USCIS. However, in accordance with the changes proposed by the Office, the same family will be eligible for exemption from paying USCIS fees only if its annual income does not exceed 37 650 dollars.

Thus, the changes proposed by USCIS do not take into account the difference in the cost of living in different states (as well as the federal poverty line itself, which is the same for all 48 states in the main US territory).

The agency's proposal, which received more 1000 public comments, also did not include predictions of how many people would be affected by these changes.

In accordance with the proposed changes, the poorest immigrants will still be able to qualify for free services, while those whose incomes exceed the poverty line will pay contributions in full, that is, no graduation or transitional period is foreseen.

Shatdaun suspended the implementation of this proposal by USCIS, the agency only managed to collect public comments, but as soon as the government reopens, the proposal is likely to become the new official rule for providing benefits to pay USCIS fees.

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