Access USA

A report by the ACLU accuses the federal government of failing to naturalize, and then deporting, immigrants after they serve in the military.

13 Muslim plaintiffs filed a lawsuit alleging that a secretive immigration program unlawfully delayed their citizenship applications for years.

More than 1000 foreign nationals who attended a fake universityset up as part of a sting by U.S. immigration authoritieswill likely be forced to leave the country within months.

Immigration attorneys block the entrance/exit in the downtown LA metropolitan detention center to demand representation NOT deportation for all Central American refugees now! #StopTheRaids #Not1More #FuckICE #lawyers4liberation

https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeedNews/posts/1064416490246035

Three approvals yesterday! VAWA based green card, marriage based green card and removal of conditions after termination of status! What a great day :)

Technological Systems Issue JUNE 26, 2015 Visa Systems Issues All visa-issuing embassies and consulates are now back online. We are scheduling visa interviews and issuing nonimmigrant and immigrant visas.... We issued more than 300,000 nonimmigrant visas this week. Consular staff will work this weekend, to clear our backlog, which we anticipate will be gone by early next week. We are still experiencing problems with some online immigrant visa application forms. We are working around the clock to correct the issue. We deeply regret the inconvenience to travelers who are waiting for visas, as well as their families and U.S. businesses that have been affected. We continue to post updates to our website, travel.state.gov. Q: How can you clear your backlog so quickly? As posts have been brought back online, we have been processing pending biometric checks. As those results are obtained and automatically transferred back to posts, our overseas staff has been completing the final adjudication steps to issue the visas. Between June 9 and June 19, 335,000 visas that ordinarily would have been printed were stuck in clearance. Of that number, nearly 300,000 have now been printed. We expect to eliminate the remaining backlog by early next week. Between June 9 and June 19, we advised affected applicants that they could cancel and reschedule their appointments for a later time. Most applicants scheduled for interview between June 9 and 19 had submitted their applications before June 9. Their interviews went ahead as scheduled. All posts have now reopened appointments, and many have added capacity to accommodate for rescheduled applicants. New appointments continue to be scheduled every day. Please see travel.state.gov for information on appointment wait times at specific posts. Q: How are cases being prioritized? We continue to facilitate urgent cases for those individuals who need to travel imminently, and will continue to do so until the systems return to full capacity. We apologize to travelers and recognize that this has caused hardship to some individuals waiting for visas as well as families and employers. Q: What about the foreign agricultural workers (H2A visa holders?) More than 3,750 temporary or seasonal workers have been issued new visas in Mexico since last week. We will continue to prioritize H-2 applicants as our systems return to normal, and will issue as many approved cases as possible. We believe that we will have issued all current pending H-2 visas by the middle of next week, and we will have additional appointments open for new H-2 visa applications. Q: What about domestic passports? Domestic passport operations are functioning, with some processing delays. Q: What about overseas passports? Overseas passport applications are being processed. There have been delays in some cases, but posts overseas are able to issue emergency passports in urgent cases.

Technological Systems Issue JUNE 19, 2015 Visa Systems Issues The Bureau of Consular Affairs is in the process of resolving technical problems with our visa systems. Biometric data is not yet processing properly to allow embassies and consulates to perform security checks required to issue visas. More than 100 experts across the country are working on this problem 24/7. We are pursuing a variety of solutions. This week, nearly 750 temporary or seasonal workers who had been ...issued visas in the past were issued new visas in Mexico, and we have issued another 1,500 visas globally for urgent and humanitarian travel. We continue to look for ways to facilitate travel as we work to restore the systems to full functionality. We deeply regret the inconvenience to travelers and recognize the hardship to those waiting for visas, and in some cases, their family members or employers in the United States. Q: What caused this outage? Was it a malicious action or hack? There is no evidence the problem is cyber-security related. This is not the same problem we had with the CCD last year, which was a problem with the database caused by a software patch. This is a hardware failure, and we are working to restore system functions. Q: How long before you restore full system functionality? Public and private sector experts are making progress in correcting the visa problem, and we are striving to have the system online sometime next week. Overseas and domestic passports are being issued. Q: How many travelers are affected by this outage? Most posts were able to handle visa interviews and some visa printing as usual through the end of last week. This week, many posts have had to reschedule visa appointments. We handle an average 50,000 applications daily worldwide. Many applicants do not have immediate travel plans, and will receive visas in time for planned trips. We are prioritizing urgent medical and other humanitarian cases as well as H2A agricultural workers. Q: Once operational, how will cases be prioritized? We are already prioritizing urgent humanitarian cases and temporary agricultural workers. Once the systems are fully operational, we will work as quickly as possible to clear the backlog of pending visa cases. We apologize to travelers and recognize that this has caused hardship to some individuals waiting for visas. Q: What about domestic passports? Domestic passport operations are functioning, with some processing delays. These technical problems have affected the intake of some mailed applications and same-day service at our passport agencies; however, we continue to issue routine and expedited passports to U.S. citizens for all overseas travel needs. Q: What about the foreign agricultural workers (H2A visa holders?) We issued nearly 750 H2A visas for agricultural workers this week. These are applicants whose biometric data was captured before the systems went down.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently published a revised Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, with an 02/13/15 edition date. The revised I-765 contains the eligibility category (c)(26) for certain H-4 dependent spouses to apply for employment authorization. Those filing under the new H-4 rule should provide the receipt number of the H-1B principal spouse's most recent Form I-797 Notice of Approval for Form I-129. While USCIS will continu...e to accept versions of the form with edition date 05/27/08 or later, H-4 applicants should use the 02/13/15 version of the form to prevent delays or the need for USCIS to issue a request for evidence. The announcement is available at http://www.uscis.gov//ale/revised-form-i-765-now-available. For more information about the H-4 rule and eligibility for employment authorization under the rule, see http://www.uscis.gov//employment-authorization-certain-h-4. A related list of frequently asked questions is available at http://www.uscis.gov//faqs-employment-authorization-certai.