Reps. Vargas, Jacobs Join Letter Urging Immigrant Work Permit Extension
San Diego-area Reps. Juan Vargas and Sara Jacobs Tuesday joined 68 of their Democratic congressional colleagues in a letter to President Joe Biden and a pair of federal agencies, urging the administration to prevent a work-permit lapse for immigrants later this month.
The letter, signed by 60 representatives and 10 senators in all, was addressed to Biden, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
It urges them lengthen the current automatic extension period for immigrants’ work permits — also known as employment authorization documents, or EADs.
“Without a new rule, immigrants and asylum seekers who have recently applied to renew their EADs will begin to lose their work authorizations beginning on April 24, 2024, purely due to continued processing delays at USCIS,” the letter reads. “In the meantime, workers and employers face grave uncertainty.”
EADs are typically valid for 180 days after their set expiration date. In May 2022, USCIS issued a temporary final rule that extended this grace period to 540 days, because USCIS faced significant delays in processing EAD renewal applications, the authors of the letter wrote.
That extension period ended Oct. 26, 2023, and since then, all EADs have been renewed for 180 days, expiring this month.
“This longer extension is critical to prevent the impending loss of employment authorization for hundreds of thousands of immigrants as a result of ongoing delays at USCIS,” the letter reads.
“Already, DHS has prepared a new rule to lengthen the automatic extension period. In our view, DHS should enact this change via an interim final rule without a sunset date, or alternatively, via a temporary final rule that leaves the benefit in place for at least 3 years.”
By: Debbie L. Sklar
Source: Times of San Diego