Immigrant Crime Victims Struggle as Special Visa Delays Mount

A program that provides special visas to immigrant crime victims who cooperate with law enforcement is being undermined by lengthy wait times, keeping applicants from accessing protections from deportation and legal work authorization. Delays in issuing U visas—or even adding applicants to a wait list that comes with those interim benefits—leave victims vulnerable to deportation and workplace exploitation while they wait. By the end of December, the backlog of applications surpassed more than 189,000 petitions for crime victims alone, not counting their dependents, according to the latest data released by US Citizenship and Immigration Services. That number has more than doubled since 2016. The prolonged wait times don’t just prevent crime victims from getting necessary benefits—they deny law enforcement a valuable tool for promoting better community relations and public safety, supporters say. “We all need those crimes to be reported,” said Anna Cushman, staff attorney at Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Battered Immigrant Project. “When getting these benefits takes so long, it really dilutes the power of the program and the efficacy of the tool.” USCIS’ recent launch of a new service center focused entirely on humanitarian cases like U visa applications is seen as a step in the right direction. But advocates are seeking more immediate progress via recent lawsuits filed by Legal Aid of North Carolina on behalf of crime victims who have waited an average of five years just to obtain protections from deportation and work permits—temporary relief that’s supposed to be granted while waiting for a U visa to become available. Community Safeguards Congress established the U visa category in 2000 as part of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act. The law allows noncitizens—particularly undocumented immigrants—to seek work authorization and protections from removal after they assist law enforcement. Victims of specified crimes including domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and stalking can qualify for a U visa with certification from law enforcement that they were helpful in an investigation. Common workplace-based crimes such as fraud in foreign labor contracting and involuntary servitude can also qualify for the visas. In a significant proportion of those cases, perpetrators try to avoid prosecution by having the victim deported, said Leslye Orloff, director of the National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project at American University Washington College of Law. “You can’t protect those victims if there’s a portion of the population that can’t cooperate with the police, that is at risk of getting deported,” said Orloff, who helped draft the legislation that created U visas. USCIS, which relies on fees to fund its operations, has struggled with wait times for numerous immigration benefits, although the agency has highlighted steps to reduce backlogs amid an expanding humanitarian workload that includes processing of thousands of parolees from Afghanistan and Ukraine. The U visa wait times aren’t just a function of demands on agency resources. USCIS typically receives four to five times the statutory cap of 10,000 U visas annually for principal petitioners. The agency didn’t respond to a request for comment. Seeking Stability In addition to immigration protections and work authorization, U visas also offer applicants access to benefits like cash assistance and health insurance. For immigrants like “Maria,” that can mean the difference in getting necessary medical care. A U visa applicant in North Carolina who’s among the plaintiffs in the delay litigation, she was told by doctors she would need to have a pacemaker inserted after visiting a hospital for difficulty breathing. But she can’t afford the procedure without health insurance. Maria received approval for interim relief including a work permit this month, three years after applying for a visa. She asked to use an alias out of fear of retaliation by her former spouse, who she reported to police for domestic violence, as well as possible adverse effects on her visa petition for speaking out. Because she’s undocumented, she often lasts only two to three weeks at a job until her employment is terminated because she can’t verify work eligibility. Legal work authorization means she can find a better paying job that may offer employer-sponsored health coverage. “I’m hopeful, God willing, that if I get the work permit I will get a better job and I will be in a better economic situation to support my children,” she told Bloomberg Law through an interpreter. “For me, this is about getting a stable job so I can provide for them.” U visa recipients significantly increase their educational attainment and English language proficiency, and their children benefit from higher grades reduced disciplinary issues at school, according to research by NIWAP. The most critical benefit, though, is the ability to work legally, Orloff said. “As soon as they get work authorization, they’re able to leave that abusive home or that abusive relationship,” she said. Lives in Limbo USCIS attempted to address the high demand for U visas by issuing regulations to grant wait-listed applicants interim relief like deferred action—if in the US—or parole to enter the country. The regulations also allowed wait-listed applicants to apply for a work permit. Delays even to be added to the wait list remained so long that Congress later authorized USCIS to grant work authorization to any applicant that the agency deemed had a “bona fide” application, a policy it adopted in 2021. But that process has failed to provide U visa applicants with work authorization and deferred action any faster than the waiting list, according to a pair of lawsuits filed by Legal Aid of North Carolina earlier this year in federal district court in Vermont and Nebraska, where USCIS service centers adjudicate the visas. At the agency’s Nebraska Service Center, for example, plaintiffs say it typically takes more than 60 months for an applicant to get a bona fide determination from the agency. USCIS has sufficient resources to issue decisions on bona fide determinations and work permits in a reasonable amount of time, but has shown an “inexplicable lack of productivity,” the lawsuits say. The complaints, which argue that the delays are unreasonable under the Administrative Procedure Act, ask the courts to compel the agency to issue bona fide determinations and decisions to add plaintiffs to the wait list within 14 days. The increasingly long waits also deny applicants the ability to seek a Social Security number, which would allow them to acquire a driver’s license or open a bank account. “Their lives are pretty much in limbo for a very, very long time,” said Evangeline Chan, director of the Immigration Law Project at victim assistance organization Safe Horizon. Humanitarian Focus Advocates for crime victims have urged lawmakers to remove the statutory cap on U visas, but have also called on USCIS to do more to get applicants deferred action and work permits more consistently and quickly. The agency’s March announcement that a sixth service center will exclusively deal with humanitarian cases like U visa applications and refugee and asylum petitions is a positive development, they say. Officers at the new service center will be specially trained to adjudicate cases involving victims of crime such as human trafficking and domestic violence. The service center will initially focus on a handful of case types, including bona fide determinations for U visa applicants. Chan said she’s “cautiously optimistic” about the service center’s ultimate impact, which will depend on staffing levels and training. “It will really make a difference,” Orloff agreed. “I expect in the next year or so we are going to see a dramatic decrease in wait times.” For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.