USCIS Furloughs Canceled Following Congressional Pressure

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was planning on furloughing at least 13,000 employees at the end of this month due to budgetary shortfalls. On Tuesday, Joseph Edlow, the agency’s Deputy Director for Policy, announced the agency will have enough funding to maintain operations through the end of the year following Congressional pressure.

According to reports from Federal News Network, Edlow said furloughs will currently be delayed but “averting this furlough comes at a severe operational cost that will increase backlogs and wait times across the board, with no guarantee we can avoid future furloughs.”

In an August 21 letter to Edlow and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) and House Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation, & Operations Chairwoman Kathleen Rice (D-NY) explained, “When this situation was first brought to Congress’ attention on May 15, 2020, USCIS estimated that it would be unable to make payroll within a matter of months and would have to take drastic action to avoid financial collapse. Subsequently, USCIS argued that without over $1.2 billion in emergency funding it would be forced to furlough 13,400 employees—approximately 70 percent of its workforce—on August 3, 2020. On July 24, 2020, furloughs were postponed until August 30, 2020.”

In the letter, the committee went on to detail that furloughing thousands of employees would cause significant hardship for many families and harm operations significantly within USCIS. They further argued that any progress made towards improving USCIS would be nullified and the legal immigration system would suffer if the furloughs went into effect.

Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (D-VA) wrote in their own letter on August 21, “Employees at USCIS perform critical work in processing visa petitions, asylum, citizenship, and naturalization applications, green cards and refugee applications. If USCIS were to furlough a vast majority of its workforce, this would drastically undercut the agency’s mission to facilitate lawful entry and immigration to the United States.”

Last week, the House passed the bipartisan Emergency Stopgap USCIS Stabilization Act (H.R. 8089), which would introduce emergency stopgap measures to prevent employees from being furloughed by increasing revenue for the agency.

Congressional assistance will be required to keep USCIS afloat since much of its revenue comes from visitor petitions and citizenship applications. The agency is requesting $1.2 billion in emergency funding to sustain operations.