January 22, 2003

Asylum & Refugee Program Funding Eliminated, Other Programs May be Affected

According to a Washington Post article, as of this Friday, January 24, 2003, it appears that asylum and refugee programs will be halted because of funding issues. Currently these programs are funded by a surcharge contained in the fees collected from other applicants’ petitions. An aide to Senator Kennedy pointed out in the Post article that this lack of funding may also cause a temporary halt in the processing of other immigration benefits such as permanent resident applications, naturalization applications and work permits.

The authorization to collect this surcharge for asylum applications and related applications was left out of the homeland security bills passed by both the Senate and the House, although language remained which authorized the government to pay for these applications. However, it appears that in the final hours of putting together the final version of the bill that became law, the language authorizing appropriation of government funds to pay for these programs was also left out. As such, these programs will have no source of funding as of Friday when the homeland security bill goes into effect. INS has not announced how they will contend with current and future applications in the wake of funding elimination.

Now that this problem has come to light, it appears that the INS and Congress are trying to resolve the shortfalls but time is running out on the effective date. The Justice Department has informed the INS that they must change their fee schedule immediately to subtract the surcharge from the current filing fees. According to the Washington Post, the INS has confirmed that it will be reducing its fees based on the elimination of the collection authorization. While normally a petition or filing with the INS will be rejected for containing the incorrect fee, the INS has said they plan to set up a refund system in this case as opposed to rejecting cases in this situation.