Work permits for asylum applicants could be paused for 'many years' under a proposed rule published by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Friday, in what would be one of the most sweeping changes to asylum-seeker employment authorization in decades.
The proposed rule, issued by the DHS, seeks to reduce incentives for migrants to file asylum applications to gain legal work authorization and aims to lower the processing workload to increase security checks.
The proposed change is part of a broader administration effort to reduce both legal and illegal immigration.
Processing may resume in 14 to 173 years
The new DHS proposal would pause processing of work permits for all new asylum applicants until average processing times for certain asylum applications reach 180 days or lower.
Based on current wait times, DHS estimated it could take between 14 and 173 years to reach the level to resume the processing, but stressed that other factors could shorten the timeline.
The Trump administration also proposed creating more restrictive eligibility criteria for asylum-based work permits, arguing that a work permit "is not an entitlement" and is issued at the discretion of the DHS secretary.
Most notably, the regulation would generally bar migrants who entered the US illegally from receiving new work permits or renewing existing ones.
The restriction would have limited exceptions for people who notified US border authorities within 48 hours of entering that they had a fear of persecution or torture or another urgent reason causing them to cross illegally.