Under the rule, certain individuals who enter the United States through its southwest land border or adjacent coastal borders are presumed to be ineligible for asylum, unless they can demonstrate an exception to the rule or rebut the presumption. Individuals are encouraged to use lawful, safe, and orderly pathways to come to the United States.
Starting Sept. 13, 2023, affirmative asylum applicants must bring an interpreter to their asylum interview if they are not fluent in English or wish to have their interview conducted in a language other than English. Your interpreter must be at least 18 years old and fluent in English and a language you speak fluently.
If you need an interpreter and do not bring one, or if your interpreter is not fluent in English and a language you speak, and you do not establish good cause, we may consider this a failure to appear for your interview and we may dismiss your asylum application or refer your asylum application to an immigration judge. We will determine good cause on a case-by-case basis.
On Sept. 23, 2020, USCIS published a temporary final rule (TFR) requiring affirmative asylum applicants to use our contracted telephonic interpreters for their asylum interviews, instead of bringing an interpreter to the interview. We published this TFR to reduce the spread of COVID-19 during asylum interviews with USCIS asylum officers while the COVID-19 national emergency and public health emergency were in effect. We published four subsequent TFRs extending the requirement, with the current extension effective through Sept. 12, 2023. This fourth extension provided additional time after the national and public health emergencies expired to allow USCIS to prepare to return to the prior regulatory requirement. With the expiration of the TFR, we revert to a long-standing regulatory requirement for an affirmative asylum applicant to provide an interpreter under 8 CFR 208.9(g).
To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.
You may live in the United States while your Form I-589 is pending before USCIS. If you are found ineligible, you can remain in the United States while your Form I-589 is pending with the immigration judge. Asylum applicants are not authorized to work unless you meet certain requirements. For more information, please see Permission to Work in the United States. Affirmative asylum applicants are rarely detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
If you are placed in expedited removal proceedings and indicate an intention to apply for asylum, express a fear of persecution or torture, or express a fear of return to your country, you will be referred to USCIS for a credible fear screening. For more information, visit the Credible Fear Screenings page.
A USCIS asylum officer will conduct a credible fear screening interview to determine whether you have a credible fear of persecution or torture. For more information, visit the Questions and Answers: Credible Fear Screening page.
A defensive application for asylum occurs when you request asylum as a defense against removal from the United States. For asylum processing to be defensive, you must be in removal proceedings in immigration court with the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).
If you are eligible for asylum you may be permitted to remain in the United States. To apply for asylum affirmatively or defensively, file a Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal, within 1 year of your arrival to the United States. Visit our Obtaining Asylum in the United States page for more information on affirmative and defensive filings. There is no fee to apply for asylum.
You may include your spouse and children who are physically present in the United States as dependents on your affirmative or defensive asylum application at the time you file or at any time until a final decision is made on your application. To include your child as a dependent on your application, the child must be under 21 years old and unmarried. For more information see our Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal page.
If you were placed in expedited removal proceedings, you received a positive credible fear determination, and USCIS retained your asylum application for further consideration in an Asylum Merits Interview, please visit our Asylum Merits Interview with USCIS: Processing After a Positive Credible Fear Determination page.
If you have an asylum application pending with us, you can check the status of your application at Case Status Online. You will need the receipt number that we provided you after you filed your application.
To apply for an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) based on your pending asylum application under the (c)(8) category, you may file a Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, 150 days after you file your asylum application. You are not eligible to receive an EAD until your asylum application has been pending for at least another 30 days, for a total of 180 days, commonly referred to as the 180-Day Asylum EAD Clock.
Delays that you request or cause while your asylum application is pending with an asylum office or with the Executive Office for Immigration Review do not count toward the 150-day waiting period or the 180-day eligibility period.
If you are required to receive and acknowledge your asylum decision at an asylum office but you fail to appear, your 180-Day Asylum EAD Clock will stop, and you may be ineligible to receive employment authorization. If your case has been referred to an Immigration Court, your 180-Day Asylum EAD Clock will not start again until your first hearing with an immigration judge.
For more information regarding employment authorization and applicant-caused delays, see The 180-Day Asylum EAD Clock Notice (PDF, 394.42 KB). If we approve your application for employment authorization based on your pending asylum application, your EAD will be valid for up to 5 years.
If you are granted asylum, you are immediately authorized to work. (Some asylees choose to obtain EADs for convenience or identification purposes, but an EAD is not necessary to work if you are an asylee.)
ALERT: If you are applying for your initial (first) employment authorization based on having a pending asylum application, you may be a member of the class action case, Rosario v. USCIS, Case No. C15-0813JLR (W.D. Wash. July 26, 2018). To learn more, visit the Rosario Class Action page.
To participate remotely, they must complete Form G-1593, Certification by Attorney or Accredited Representative for Remote Participation in an Affirmative Asylum and/or NACARA 203 Interview (PDF, 248.05 KB), and submit it to the asylum office where we have scheduled your interview.
If you are granted asylum you may petition to bring your spouse and children to the United States by filing a Form I-730, Refugee/Asylee Relative Petition. To include your child on your application, the child must be under 21 and unmarried.
You may be approved for a Green Card 1 year after being granted asylum. To apply for a Green Card, file a Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or to Adjust Status. You must submit a separate Form I-485 application packet for yourself and, if applicable, for each family member who received derivative asylum based on your application.
On May 31, 2022, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) began implementing a rule to ensure that those subject to expedited removal who are eligible for asylum are granted relief quickly and those who are not are promptly removed. By establishing a process for the efficient and thorough review of asylum claims, the new rule aims to reduce existing immigration court backlogs and to shorten the adjudication process to several months. The rule is being implemented in a phased manner, beginning with a small number of individuals, and continues to grow as USCIS builds operational capacity.
The consortium consists of four City University of New York (CUNY) schools: Baruch College, City College, Hunter College, and Queens College; Columbia University; New York Law School; and New York University. Each institution will sponsor three full days at the clinic this fall by giving their students the chance to volunteer as application assistants. Additionally, many of the institutions will offer students the opportunity to earn credit for time spent at the center, either in the form of courses or internships. In total, the sponsored days, for-credit courses, and undergraduate and graduate internships are expected to provide opportunities for hundreds of students to support thousands of asylum seekers in submitting their asylum applications.
Over four out of every ten Immigration Court cases in which asylum applications have been filed since October 2000 are still pending. That means that of the 1.6 million Court cases in which asylum applications were filed, two-thirds of a million asylum seekers (667,229) are still waiting for hearings to resolve their cases. See Figure 1.
For many asylum cases, multiple hearings are required before an Immigration Judge reaches a final decision. The initial hearing is called a Master Calendar hearing.[1] Master Calendar hearings are similar in some respects to an arraignment in a criminal case: multiple cases are heard at the same session and the purpose is to sort out what is needed for the case to move forward and ultimately be resolved. Even the wait for a Master Calendar hearing is an average of 1,136 days in cases in which an asylum application has already been filed. Just under a third of pending asylum cases, some 205,178 immigrants, are currently waiting for a Master Calendar hearing.
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