Maria Eran used to
work at a bank branch near Boston. But since January, she hasn’t been able to
go to work, or even drive. “My home is a jail for me now,” she told Bloomberg. Her
workplace, the Santander Bank, has sent her on unpaid leave since her work
permit expired.

Eran of course is
not alone in her plight. More than a million immigrants are waiting to receive
work permits from the United States government for months, at a time when
labour is in short supply, Bloomberg reported.  

Work permit delays
have become a major challenge for both workers and workplaces in the US. Data
from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) show that the
estimated waiting time for work permits has gone up to eight to 12 months from
just three months in 2020.

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Pending work
permit numbers rose to 1.5 million at the end of the fiscal year last September,
a steep rise from 649,000 the previous year. This at a time when US job vacancies
went up to 10.9 million by December.    

The delays in
processing work permits almost cost Waqar Aqeel his prized Google job. The 29-year-old
finished his doctorate in computer science from Duke University in December
2021 and was eager to join Google as an internet privacy and security expert.

The Pakistani
national is just the kind of talent that Google is looking to attract. Which is
why the tech giant waited for him. But Aqeel knew “they were not going to wait
forever,” Bloomberg reported. 

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Aqeel’s work
permit had been approved in October. All that the USCIS office needed to do was
to send him a card that he would need to hand in to join work. But that was
taking months. It was only after he threatened to sue the government that he
received his card, just three weeks prior to the deadline.

The only way
applicants can know the status of their work permit applications is through the
USCIS website. But they aren’t allowed to formally ask why there was a delay in
the processing of their applications before the scheduled time, which in early
March ranged between 10-12 months.

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Workers like Eran
and Aqeel can’t even seek expedited processes, because the US government does
not recognise potential job loss as reason enough to expedite requests. The
USCIS website says, “The need to obtain employment authorization by itself,
without evidence of other compelling factors, does not warrant expedited
treatment.”  

USCIS director Ur
Jaddou acknowledges the delays. He said last month that the agency is taking
several steps to reduce the number of pending cases and overall processing
times. The Biden administration is, however, taking slow but sure steps to
address the crisis.

Also Read | Over 25,000 foreigners overstayed in India in 2021: Union government

Last month, the
USCIS decided to extend the validity of six types of work permits: refugees,
asylees (granted, not pending status), individuals granted withholding of
deportation or renewal, applicants under the Violence Against Women Act,
individuals paroled into the country for urgent humanitarian reasons, and
individuals granted deferred action, but not including Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA).  

While the White
House is taking steps to reverse the tight Trump-era immigration policies,
businesses are running out of patience. Dane Linn, vice-president of
immigration policy at the Business Roundtable, told The Financial Times that “the
business community feels strongly that we need to fix the system. We cannot
fill all the jobs by simply growing the talent we have here in the US. We need
to grow that talent, but we also need to attract [workers]…from around the
world.”