Phoenix Immigration & Naturalization Law Blog

Asylum-seekers in Arizona whose bid for asylum has been rejected on the grounds that they did not establish that they had a "credible fear" of returning to their home country may be able to appeal their rejection before an immigration judge. On March 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that denying asylum-seekers this right violates non-citizens' constitutional rights.

The asylum-seeker in this case was a man from Sri Lanka who was part of the Tamil minority. Despite his assertion that his support of a Tamil politician resulted in his kidnapping and torture, an agent with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that he failed the "credible fear" standard. When the man sought to appeal it, he found that the only grounds for doing so were on technical errors that had to do with whether the person actually qualified for "expedited removal".

Arizona employers who wish to obtain an H-1B visa for foreign workers must prepare well before the filing season opens on April 1. Although the fiscal year in which those workers would be eligible for employment does not begin until Oct. 1, the volume of applications means the window of eligibility is usually only open for one week. The cap may be reached even sooner. In 2018, it took only five days.

Only 65,000 new H-1B visas are granted each year, and another 20,000 new ones are granted for people who have obtained graduate degrees from universities in the United States. Employees can only work for the employer who obtains the visa, and the visas are good for three years. They can be renewed for a maximum of six years. Which petitions are accepted is determined by a lottery process.

Citizens of Arizona may be interested to learn that despite the Trump administration promising to streamline the legal immigration system, plenty of the decisions made by the administration have proven deleterious to the immigration courts, the latest of which has been the government shutdown and how it has been causing the cancellation of 20,000 cases every week. Experts believe that if the shutdown persists until the end of January, the number of backlogged cases during these five weeks could be more than 100,000.

During Trump's first 16 months as president, the backlog of immigration court cases grew by about 33 percent, reaching 714,000 cases. To make matters worse, this increase in the number of cases that have no scheduled court date is not due to an increase in the number of case filings but rather due to decisions made by the Trump administration.

The 2018 fiscal year for the United States government ended on Sept. 30. As of that date, U.S. Customs and Border Protection says credible fear asylum claims at the Mexico border increased 67 percent from the previous year. That translates to a total of 92,959 claims as opposed to just 55,584 a year prior. Furthermore, the number of credible fear claims as a percentage of all people stopped at the border increased to 18 percent from 13 percent a year earlier.

During the 2018 fiscal year, 21 percent of asylum claims were granted by a judge. In most instances, those who pass the credible fear threshold are given ankle monitors and released until their cases are heard. It is believed that about 75 percent of those who ask for asylum make it past the initial part of the process. The increase in individuals claiming asylum at the United States border with Mexico is partially because of a caravan of individuals coming from Central America.