By Cronkite News | Via AZBigMedia
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it is making “drastic cuts” that will affect all agency services, including naturalizations, in order to avoid furloughs of nearly 70% of its workforce at the end of this month.
Immigration advocates worried Wednesday that the cuts would add to an already large backlog of cases and that they could endanger DACA recipients who need to renew their legal status. Agency officials did not dispute the claim that services will take a hit.
“This is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to take a hacksaw to legal immigration. USCIS processing times were already almost double what they had been prior to Trump taking office in many cases, and COVID-19 only further added to this backlog. These cuts will do even worse, and the victims are individuals, families, employers, and corporations who rely on reliable processing times to obtain green cards, work permits, DACA renewals, visas, citizenship interviews, etc.
The real life impact of these delays could be the difference in keeping or losing a job, staying in the USA or having to return to your home country and wait, or even life and death in some cases. America is a nation built on the backs of immigrants, but you wouldn’t know it from the way they are being treated in 2020. Shameful.”
–Darius Amiri, Rose Law Group Immigration Dept. Chair
