The United States may tighten rules for filing asylum applications – Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will reject them without an interview. Refusal may occur if the application was submitted more than a year after entering the country. Skylex immigration lawyer Mikhail Arsentyev spoke in detail to RTVI.US about this new mechanism, explained who would be at greatest risk, and gave practical recommendations for preparing an application.
Under US immigration law, foreign nationals must apply for asylum within one year of arriving in the US. However, exceptions to this rule are allowed – for example, in cases of serious illness, poor quality legal assistance or other extenuating circumstances. In addition, the restriction does not apply to unaccompanied minors entering the country, CBS News reports.
The proposed order would effectively change USCIS's long-standing practice of interviewing applicants before making a decision on their case. Now the department will be able to quickly reject applications submitted in violation of the deadline, without proceeding to full consideration. CBS notes that after this, the case materials will be transferred to the Department of Justice, and the applicants will have to defend their rights in immigration court.
According to Arsentiev, the proposed initiative is not completely new. Previously, the administration of US President Donald Trump has already promoted a similar approach in immigration courts, providing for the possibility of dismissing clearly untenable cases without holding a full hearing. This has led to increased early termination rates.
“If a similar approach is introduced at the USCIS level, this will be a logical continuation of the course towards accelerated filtering of applications that, according to the authorities, do not initially comply with the requirements of the asylum legislation,” Arsentiev noted.
In this case, we are talking specifically about the rejection mechanism – the rejection of an application at the initial stage without its full consideration on its merits. According to Arsentiev, this could significantly expand the powers of USCIS to screen out cases, but does not automatically end the process.
The expert emphasizes that the innovation will affect not so much citizens of specific countries, but a separate category of cases in which there is no sufficient legal basis for granting asylum. Thus, according to the interlocutor, there are often cases in which applicants refer to general socio-economic problems of the country of origin, a high level of corruption, an unstable situation or domestic conflicts. However, such circumstances in themselves usually do not constitute grounds for obtaining asylum in the United States.
“The areas of greatest risk will be applications with a weak evidentiary base, internal contradictions or lack of legally significant grounds for granting asylum. At the same time, the initiative may have the most noticeable effect on countries whose citizens traditionally submit a large number of applications for asylum in the United States,” Arsentiev said.
The rule will primarily affect new applicants and those whose cases are in the early stages of review. The main risks will be a higher threshold for initial verification and reduced opportunities to correct deficiencies in the application after submission, the expert added.
The lawyer recommends that you be especially careful when preparing your case. Already at the filing stage, it is important to substantiate in detail the existence of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on one of the grounds protected by law and provide supporting evidence.
According to CBS News, as of last year, USCIS had about 1.5 million pending asylum applications. In addition, the Department of Justice had a backlog of approximately 3.3 million cases in the immigration courts in March. It is expected that the new measure will speed up the processing of applications and more quickly send controversial cases to judges for consideration.
“One of the main arguments in favor of such measures is the need to combat unfounded claims and reduce the burden on the asylum system. “Over the past years, American authorities have repeatedly stated the need to more effectively identify cases that do not contain sufficient grounds to provide protection in accordance with the law,” Arsentiev added.
