U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, has changed the way “adjusted age” is calculated for purposes of determining whether a child can take advantage of the Child Status Protection Act, or CSPA. The change advances the date when the child’s age is measured and, as a result, should allow more children to qualify for the law’s protections. But it also affects when the one-year period starts, during which they must take action to immigrate.

CLINIC's policy brief for USCIS outlines the issues that religious workers, and in turn the American communities they serve, are facing due to the agency's backlogs and other policies. The brief offers concrete steps that USCIS can take immediately to reduce the harm to essential religious workers.

The one-page flyer provides information about the upcoming fee increase and changes to fee waiver for the N-400 naturalization application. This resource is intended to assist you as you counsel naturalization applicants and suggest best time to file their applications with USCIS.

This one-page flyer helps to notify immigrants about the upcoming USCIS fee changes and encourages them to act soon to avoid paying increased fees

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, is requesting a $1.2 billion bailout from Congress, saying that without it, they will drastically cut services and furlough 13,400 public servants. USCIS, which processes immigration and naturalization applications, is funded primarily by the fees it charges customers – immigrants, their families and employers. Other federal agencies are funded by taxpayer dollars.

On May 21, USCIS announced that it is incorporating the remaining content from the Adjudicator’s Field Manual, or AFM, into the USCIS Policy Manual. The Policy Manual is still a work in progress, and during this transition period, the AFM text has been moved to the related Policy Manual sections.

This resource is for you and your team and is intended to help raise awareness of the fee changes. It includes CLINIC’s Top 10 Tips for Practitioners as well as an easy-to-print, one-page chart of the top fee increases.

Based on updates to the USCIS Policy Manual, issued on April 24, 2020, you can no longer look to USCIS guidance to support the argument that unintentional false claims do not trigger admissibility.

On November 19, 2019, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced changes to its Policy Manual section on Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) petitions. The changes are effective immediately and apply to cases pending on, and filed on or after, November 19, 2019. This resource briefly summarizes some of the key changes and contains a chart comparing the current version with the previous Policy Manual section on SIJS.

USCIS’ Acting Director Kenneth Cuccinelli responded to over 150 advocates’ request that the agency provide a 60-day comment period for the public to respond to USCIS’ proposal to change its fee schedule. Acting Director Cuccinelli stated that USCIS will only provide a 30-day comment period to respond to its 300+ page proposal.

On Nov. 12, 2019, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., with over 150 organizations, agencies and local governments, delivered a letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Acting Director Kenneth Cuccinelli and Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Acting Administrator Paul Ray, urgently requesting a 60-day comment period for the public to respond to USCIS’ proposal to change its fee schedule.

On August 19, 2019, USCIS issued new policy guidance in its Policy Manual on employment authorization for non-citizens who have been paroled into the United States. The policy guidance states that employment authorization for parolees is discretionary and lays out the factors that should be taken into account when determining whether employment authorization should be granted as a matter of discretion.

The following are stories of survivors of crimes and abuse who continue to suffer extreme hardships due to USCIS unnecessary delays in processing their applications for protection from future harm.

CLINIC’s policy brief examines extreme processing delays at USCIS under the Trump administration and the particular consequences to TPS holders and their families. The brief questions USCIS’ methods in dealing with the processing delays for TPS holders, pointing out that USCIS elected an unusual, inefficient, and error-prone process. The brief includes recommendations for oversight and holding the administration accountable.

IMPORTANT LEGAL UPDATE: On July 1, 2019, CLINIC and other partners brought a lawsuit challenging the legality of this memo, and as a result, a federal district judge has issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting USCIS from applying this memo while the lawsuit is ongoing. JOP v. DHS, No. 19-1944 (D. Md.). For more information about that lawsuit, see CLINIC's JOP v.