Biden Admin Extends Work Permits for Hundreds of Thousands of Illegal Immigrants

President Joe Biden speaks in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House, on April 3, 2024. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration is extending work permits for some illegal immigrants just weeks before an April 24 deadline that may have left hundreds of thousands without jobs, according to officials.

A temporary final rule (TFR) issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on April 4 extends the validity period for Employment Authorisation Documents (EADs) from 180 days to 540 days.

The temporary measure means eligible illegal immigrants who filed an EAD renewal application on or after Oct. 27, 2023, will still be eligible to work for at least another 360 days while their EAD renewals are processed.

It will also apply to eligible illegal immigrants who filed their EAD renewals Form I-765 application during a 540-day period that begins with the rule’s publication in the Federal Register.

The rule will be effective as of April 8, according to officials.

President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is taking these steps to “help prevent renewal applicants from experiencing a lapse in their employment authorization and documentation,” the temporary final rule states.

The extension also ensures the continuity of operations, businesses, and entities who may have made decisions regarding contracts, signing leases, or applying for grants with the expectation that their impacted employees would receive timely renewals of employment authorization and documentation, the rule states.

‘Record Number of Employment Authorization Applications’

According to DHS, without the temporary final rule, approximately 800,000 renewal EAD applicants “will be in danger of having their applications remain pending beyond the 180-day automatic extension period,” which would result in the applicants losing their work permits in the two-year period beginning May 2024 “because of USCIS processing delays and through no fault of their own.”

Additionally, roughly 60,000 to 80,000 employers would be negatively impacted without the extension, officials said.

The two largest groups to benefit from the extension will be asylum-seekers and foreign nationals who are in the process of attempting to change their status to permanent residency, The Hill reports.

“Over the last year, the USCIS workforce reduced processing times for most EAD categories, supporting an overall goal to improve work access to eligible individuals. However, we also received a record number of employment authorization applications, impacting our renewal mechanisms,” USCIS director Ur M Jaddou said in a press release announcing the temporary final rule.

“Temporarily lengthening the existing automatic extension up to 540 days will avoid lapses in employment authorizations. At the same time, this rule provides DHS with an additional window to consider long-term solutions by soliciting public comments, and identifying new strategies to ensure those noncitizens eligible for employment authorization can maintain that benefit,” Ms. Jaddou added.

Trump Calls Border Crisis a ‘Blood Bath’

The announcement marks the second time President Biden has granted an extension of up to 540 days for certain illegal immigrants.

In May 2022, DHS published a temporary final rule for certain renewal EAD applications filed during a limited period, which ended in October 2023; resulting in the automatic extension period going back to 180 days.

In its latest temporary rule, USCIS said that while its previous rule prevented a substantial number of renewal applicants from experiencing a lapse in their employment authorization and/or documentation, the processing times for renewal EAD applications are “currently at such a level that the current 180-day automatic extension period for certain renewal EAD applications remains insufficient to prevent a large number of lapses in the coming months.”

The new extension applies to all immigrant categories that were covered by the 2022 rule.

Elsewhere in the April 4 press release, the Biden administration touted its efforts to secure the southern border amid the ongoing illegal immigrant crisis that President Donald Trump branded a “blood bath“ while addressing a crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on April 2.

DHS said it has removed or returned over 617,000 individuals—the vast majority of whom crossed the southwest border— including more than 97,000 individual family members, since May 12, 2023.

“The majority of all individuals encountered at the southwest border over the past three years have been removed, returned, or expelled,” the press release stated. “Total removals and returns since mid-May exceed removals and returns in every full fiscal year since 2011.”