News Flash on Immigration Law Update By Michael Joseph on February 09, 2019

Trump had said ‘DACA is dead,’ but his administration has approved 55,000 applications

The most recent flashpoint on immigration has been the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program, which was established by the Obama Administration in 2012 to allow some people who were brought to the United States illegally as minors to receive a work permit and temporary protection from deportation. The Trump administration rescinded the program in early September, 2017, but delayed implementation for six months to encourage Congress to address the issue. Since then, there has been indication that a compromise between the President and Senate Democrats may allow parts of the provision to stay in place, but no agreement has been reached or approved. Our Westchester DACA lawyers hope that the Congress will reach a deal to protect the dreamers permanently.

The Trump administration had planned to phase out the program and rescind work permits for hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients, also known as “dreamers,” beginning March 5. But federal district judges in California and New York issued nationwide injunctions blocking those plans. More than 55,000 DACA initial and renewal applications were approved in the first three months of 2018, according to a quarterly report from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services filed in court by the Justice Department, as part of ongoing DACA litigation in California. Our New York Immigration and Deportation attorneys are closely monitoring the developments in the law.

USCIS to Suspend Premium Processing for Fiscal Year 2019

On March 20, 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the premium processing requests will not be accepted for cases filed pursuant to the fiscal year 2019(FY19) H1B Cap. Any request for premium processing (Form I-907) filed with a cap-subject H1B petition will be rejected. It is expected that premium processing for cap-subject H1B petitions will be suspended until September 10, 2018.

H1B cases not subject to the cap, such as H1B extensions and amendments, can continue to utilize premium processing as usual.