Legacy INS Actions against Asylees are National Embarrassment
Posted Feb 20, 2004

A federal judge issued a scathing ruling against the Legacy INS on February 12, 2004 regarding the treatment of asylees in connection with their Adjustment of Status (I-485) cases. The ruling stated that the Legacy INS committed violations of the law that were a national embarrassment. The judge ordered the USCIS to adjust the status of approximately 22,000 asylee adjustment applicants. The MurthyBulletin reported on the filing of the class action lawsuit in our March 15, 2002 article, Government Sued over Mishandling of Asylee Adjustment Cases, available on MurthyDotCom.

The basic idea behind the lawsuit was that the government was not properly adjudicating the adjustment of status cases filed by persons who had been granted asylum. Subject to limited exceptions, only 10,000 persons per year can adjust status to permanent residence via a grant of asylum status. It is possible to apply for adjustment of status after holding asylum status for one year. However, most of the asylees must wait until one of the 10,000 annual numbers is available before his or her case can be approved. Each attends an adjustment of status interview and, if successful, receives notification of the lack of available asylee adjustment numbers. However, the government had not been issuing even the permitted 10,000 approvals each year.

Asylees often have to wait a number of years, expending money on annual Employment Authorization Documents (EADs). The opinion lashed out at the Legacy INS with respect to the EAD process with its associated fee when the law requires that asylees should be granted EADs as incident to their status. The court noted that asylees also suffer in a number of additional ways because of the wait for permanent residence, including delayed eligibility for citizenship. The decision in Ngwanya v. Ashcroft, hopefully, will put an end to that problem. The 22,000 cases that the USCIS must now act upon correspond to the approximately 22,000 unallocated asylee adjustment numbers that were not issued by the Legacy INS.

We hope that this puts an end to the troubles faced by asylees, many of whom have already suffered immensely in their own countries and have sought refuge in ours.