Northwest attorneys claim U.S. wrongly rejected thousands of humanitarian visa applications

By Conrad Wilson (OPB)
Nov. 19, 2020 11:07 p.m. Updated: Nov. 20, 2020 12:19 a.m.

A group of immigration attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, challenging a new agency policy that immigration advocates claim has caused thousands of humanitarian visa applications to be rejected this year.

The lawsuit alleges USCIS is denying applications for asylum seekers, victims of violent crime and human trafficking if their application forms have any blank spaces or unanswered questions, even in cases where those questions are not applicable.

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“So, what that means is if someone doesn’t put something down in the blank for their middle name because they have no middle name, it gets rejected,” said Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and one of the attorneys behind the lawsuit. “It’s like some bureaucrat’s diabolical scheme.”

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The humanitarian visas are longstanding protections provided by Congress for immigrants fleeing dangerous situations in their home countries.

The new policy began late last year, but the lawsuit states that the government didn’t give proper notice.

“In fact, USCIS never explained its reasoning for the policy,” the lawsuit states. “For decades prior to this unannounced new policy, USCIS accepted applications that left blank fields which did not apply to the applicant and which were not critical to eligibility for the requested benefit.”

So far, Adams said, nearly 12,000 applications from crime victims alone were rejected between late 2019 and July 2020.

A spokesperson for USCIS said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

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