How COVID-19 Has Negatively Affected Immigration and What We Can Do to Fix It
The monthly average of immigrant visa cases pending at the National Visa Center has skyrocketed since 2019, with a 732% increase in June 2021.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) recently released a policy brief which highlights practical ways for the Department of State (DOS) to reduce delays, eliminate backlogs and inefficiencies, and re-open immigration that has been greatly reduced during the initial COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.
The policy brief explains how the COVID-19 travel and immigration restrictions were just the most recent limitations:
Immigration to the United States from overseas has been significantly hampered due to various assaults by the prior administration to close its doors to individuals based on their religion, their country of origin, their wealth, and their health.
The final blow was delivered by the COVID-19 global pandemic, which shuttered the door to America for more than a year through the imposition of travel bans that used the pandemic as a pretext to keep people out of the United States and through closures of the U.S. embassies and consulates. Despite rescinding certain travel bans, President Biden resurrected regional travel bans under the guise of COVID-19, exacerbating already crisis-level immigrant and nonimmigrant visa backlogs and visa processing delays at the Department of State (DOS).
These restrictions and the pandemic in general have had significant consequences for individuals, families, and U.S. businesses for more than a year. The travel restrictions have kept families separated, restricted the issuance of immigrant and nonimmigrant visas, cost individuals their chance at the American Dream, and impaired the ability of U.S. businesses to bring in and bring back foreign talent to fill seasonal and permanent positions, thereby impacting our nation’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding due to the miracles of modern science, it is time for America to reopen its borders and for DOS to get back to business.
The data shows how striking these limitations have been:
The average number of immigrant visas issued per month during the pandemic is just over 11,000. This is a nearly 70-percent drop and a far cry from the pre-pandemic average of close to 39,000.
The monthly average of immigrant visa cases pending at the National Visa Center has skyrocketed since 2019, with a 732% increase in June 2021.
During the same time, nonimmigrant visa issuances fell sharply by 80%.
In fiscal year 2020, over 100,000 family-based and diversity preference category visas went unused
AILA urges the Department of State to take steps to once again deliver high-volume, world-class, efficient consular services to U.S. citizens and visa applicants around the globe. Specifically, AILA outlines 10 practical recommendations for DOS:
Reopen America (terminate travel restrictions)
Resume stateside processing of visa renewals
Expand visa interview waiver eligibility
Automatically extend visas that have expired during the COVID-19 global pandemic by 24 months
Maximize staffing on immigrant visa processing at consular posts
Revise regulations to allow virtual immigrant and nonimmigrant visa interviews
Leverage U.S.-based consular officers to adjudicate visa applications
Admit all U.S. lawful permanent residents returning to the United States from abroad without conducting an abandonment analysis if they last departed the United States on or after December 31, 2019, or who had a valid reentry permit on that date and discourage SB-1 returning resident visa applications
Adopt a policy to automatically extend immigrant visas from 6 months to 18 months, in coordinate with Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
Recapture and avoid the loss of unallocated visas
The policy brief can be read in full here. For questions on business-based and family-based immigration, please contact our team at info@imlaw.biz.