Church World Service respectfully submits the following comment in response to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) request for comment on the Temporary Increase of the Automatic Extension Period of Employment Authorization and Documentation for Certain Employment Authorization Document (EAD) Renewal Applicants, 89 Fed. Reg. 24628 (Apr. 8, 2024) (to be codified at 8 C.F.R. pt. 274a) (DHS Docket No. USCIS–2024–0002).
Church World Service (CWS) is a global faith-based organization providing services to refugees, asylees, asylum seekers, TPS holders, and other newcomer populations throughout 58 sites and affiliates in 25 states and the District of Columbia. CWS thanks DHS and USCIS for the opportunity to comment on the Temporary Final Rule (TFR) that extends work permits. CWS has a particular interest in USCIS-2024-0002 as a service provider offering legal support and employment services to populations who rely on timely renewals of EADs and who will be greatly impacted by the rule. For example, CWS sites assist in administering the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s (ORR) Matching Grant Program, which provides case management, job training, and referrals to promote rapid entry into the workforce and remove barriers to economic self-sufficiency for ORR-eligible populations. CWS is committed to ensuring that immigrant workers are able to maintain employment in the formal economy.
Recognizing that the ability to secure and maintain stable employment is a significant factor in the economic self-sufficiency and community integration of arriving immigrants and asylum seekers, Church World Service is submitting this comment to urge USCIS to take steps to prevent eligible individuals from losing their jobs because of government processing delays. CWS urges USCIS to issue a longer and permanent automatic work permit extension that covers all eligible workers and to ensure that it can process work permit renewals for any other immigrants in danger of losing their jobs, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients. We are responding to three questions from USCIS and suggesting changes USCIS should make to the rule in order to more effectively support immigrant and asylum seekers’ participation in the formal workforce.
Executive Summary
The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) and USCIS are requesting public comments on the temporary extension, and specifically requesting responses to the following three questions:
- Whether DHS regulations should be revised to permanently lengthen the automatic extension period to up to 540 days for employment authorization and/or EAD validity for eligible renewal applicants;
- Whether a different permanent extension period should be implemented, for some or all applicants covered by the automatic extension provision on either a temporary or permanent basis; and
- Whether other solutions should be considered to mitigate the risk of expiring employment authorization and/or EAD validity for some or all applicants covered by the automatic extension provision.
Church World Service recommends the following solutions to protect all eligible work permit renewal applicants, and stresses that robust protections for immigrant workers promotes the wellbeing of families and communities.
- To ensure that all eligible work permit renewal applicants are protected from loss of work authorization while they wait for the government to process their renewal applications, DHS should permanently revise its regulations to lengthen the automatic extension period for work permit eligibility to 730 days, which would protect many of the approximately 260,000 applicants the agency projects will lose work authorization in spite of this temporary rule.
- In order to mitigate the risk of expiring work permits, USCIS should begin to build much-needed technology described in the temporary rule to identify and prioritize those applicants whose work authorization will lapse if not processed. Since the rule estimates it will take a year to create this much-needed technology, USCIS should, in the meantime, create a clear and easy mechanism for immigrant workers, including DACA recipients and others not covered under this rule, to alert USCIS if they are in danger of losing their job and require expedited processing.
- Additionally, USCIS should reissue 540-day (or longer) receipt notices to all eligible applicants who received 180-day receipt notices between October 27, 2023 – April 8, 2024, but who are currently eligible for the 540-day extension. Alternatively, USCIS should provide a mechanism for individuals to request new receipts as evidence of the longer automatic extension period.
Church World Service applauds DHS for issuing the automatic extension of work permits to keep 800,000 workers in the formal economy.
The temporary extension of work permits will bring much-needed relief to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and other immigrant workers. In fact, the agency predicts that a 540 day automatic extension will protect approximately 800,000 people from losing their work authorization due to USCIS processing delays. Further, lengthening the extension will allow immigrant workers to maintain access to drivers and professional licenses, which are often crucial for immigrants to remain employed and access services that support community integration
DHS should revise its regulations to permanently lengthen the automatic extension period to 730 days for all eligible renewal applicants
Though DHS predicts that lengthening the automatic extension of eligibility to 540 days would have a transformative impact for approximately 800,000 immigrant workers and their communities, it also estimates that despite the 540-day extension, due to processing delays, approximately 260,000 applicants could remain at risk of losing their work authorization between November 2025 and April 2027 if today’s processing conditions remain stable. Given the insufficiency of the 540 day extension, Church World Service strongly urges DHS to protect workers who would not be covered by a 540 day extension by revising the automatic extension period to 730 days for all eligible applicants.
According to the Temporary Final Rule, the majority of individuals who would be still left at risk of losing work authorization are those who received 2-year initial asylum application EADs in the latter half of Fiscal Year 2023, which is when USCIS significantly increased its production to comply with the Rosario court order’s 30-day processing time mandate. The rule contemplates increasing the automatic eligibility period from 540 to 730 days, a change which it says “could ensure that a large part of the approximately 260,000 renewal EAD applicants who are currently predicted to experience a gap in employment authorization” under a 540 day extension period would be protected from a lapse.
However, the rule notes that its scope includes only those who applied on or after October 27th, 2023, and that TPS holders’ EADs may only remain valid for 18 months, so if it were to increase the automatic extension of eligibility to 730 days, some people would still only benefit from a 540 day extension. It argues that lengthening the eligibility period to 730 days would heighten “the risk of confusion as employers would be required to understand and adhere to additional different extension periods depending on eligibility category on the EAD the worker possessed and when the EAD renewal application was filed.”
Church World Service strongly believes that the relative benefit of increasing the automatic extension period to 730 days to ensure that the greatest number of eligible immigrants are able continue participating in the formal workforce far outweighs any concerns that discrepancies in the length of extension available to different populations may cause confusion. Rather than knowingly allow workers to lose their work authorization and risk losing their employment and other essential resources including access to medical care, housing, drivers licenses, and professional certifications, DHS should revise its regulations to ensure individuals who have received the automatic extension – including those who previously received a 540-day extension under the 2022 TFR – will receive a 730 day extension. Doing so would create unified guidance and prevent the largest possible number of workers from falling out of the workforce due to processing delays.
Immigrant workers are key to the success of many industries that are essential to the U.S. economy, including construction, medicine, technology, and trucking. A longer extension period means that employers will be able to keep more people employed, minimizing disruption to industries with high demand for labor and strengthening local communities and economies.
USCIS should create mechanisms to help immigrant workers stuck in backlogs who do not benefit from the work permit extension, including DACA recipients.
Not all immigrant workers will benefit from this current work permit extension. For example, DACA recipients and individuals who apply for a work permit renewal after their work authorization has expired are not included in this rule. Church World Service urges USCIS to prioritize processing work permit applications so that no immigrants lose their jobs as a result of processing backlogs.
The rule contemplates creating technology to adjudicate work permit applications in the order in which individuals’ work permits will expire – estimating it will take one year to build. We recommend that DHS mitigate the risk of immigrants losing their work authorization by: (1) immediately creating a mechanism for immigrant workers to identify themselves to USCIS if they have a work permit that will expire in less than 30 days; and (2) building technology to identify and adjudicate applications based on their expiration date long-term.
Employers would greatly benefit from this mechanism and new technology. If USCIS implements these systems, fewer employees will lose their work authorization due to processing delays, which will reduce disruptions to the labor force, supporting the strength of local economies and communities. Businesses who employ applicants ineligible for the work permit extension would especially benefit from new systems that allow workers to remain employed without interruption.
Conclusion
Church World Service urges the agency to prioritize the following solutions to ensure that no immigrant workers lose work authorization due to work permit renewal processing delays. First, the automatic eligibility extension should be permanent. Second, DHS should uniformly increase the extension to 730 days to prevent immigrants from falling out of the workforce due to processing delays. Last, USCIS should use and invest in creating mechanisms to prioritize identifying and processing work permit applications for individuals whose work permits are about to expire.