Immigration officials have made steady progress in the time it takes to process asylum seekers’ work permits, following a failed bid to hold the government in contempt over worsening delays.
The share of work permit applications US Citizenship and Immigration Services processed within a court-mandated 30-day timeline plummeted to under 5% last year—a result, government lawyers said, of a spike in those applications. But by April 2023, that figure rebounded to 44.4% of work permits being processed within a month, according to a USCIS compliance report.
There were more than 708,000 pending asylum applications at the end of last year, according to USCIS data.
The improvement in the percentage of applications the agency is processing within the 30-day deadline comes amid a federal district judge’s dismissal of a 2020 lawsuit over a Trump administration regulation that extended the wait time before asylum seekers could apply for work permits. Judge Paula Xinis of the US District Court for the District of Maryland, who blocked the regulation in 2020, ruled last week that the case was moot after a separate federal judge vacated the rule in 2022.
Asylum applicants can’t apply for a work permit until 180 days after they file their asylum claims. But processing backlogs mean they often end up waiting additional months for approval once they complete work permit applications.
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