Headlines:
N.Y. business ready to hire migrants once they receive work permits
Immigration law: Chicago hotel industry throws support behind bill to fast-track work permits for Chicago migrants
Why Biden Can’t Expedite Work Permits for Migrants
More than 100,000 migrants have traveled to New York City from the southern border over the past year, relying on the state and city government for food, shelter, medical care and education. Governor Hochul has been urging the Biden administration to get work permits to asylum seekers faster so that they can support themselves and their families as they wait out the years it takes for their cases to wind through the immigration system.
Under federal law, migrants have to wait about six months after they file their asylum application before they can apply for permission to work in the United States legally. This has forced asylum seekers to rely on communities to support them and has led to more people entering the illegal work force.
For the most part, asylum seekers want to work and pay taxes, and businesses across the country are anxious to fill job openings that have lingered since the pandemic.
The delay is enshrined in law.
In 1996, Congress stipulated that asylum seekers had to wait nearly six months after they filed their asylum application before they could apply for permission to work in the United States.
Lawmakers believed that forcing asylum seekers to wait six months before they could apply to work would discourage people from crossing the border illegally and making potentially fraudulent asylum claims so they could get jobs.
Congress cannot agree on changes to the law.
For the past 15 years, Congress has failed to agree on how to update the country’s immigration system, even as the current laws date back to the 1980s and 1990s and were designed around a much different U.S. economy and demographic set of migrants.
Other options face lawsuits or backlogs that could lead to even longer waits.
