Very soon it will be necessary to complete a new form to request asylum in the United States. It is the I-589, as confirmed by the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS, for its acronym in English).Likewise, another new form will be released in the case of qualifying to request Employment Authorization. It will be the I-765, as the USCIS pointed out. The Office indicated that since November it will not accept the models of the old form. These are identified by their edition date, located on the inside pages of both applications. An important clarification: Prior versions of Forms I-589 and I-765 can still be filed prior to November 7.

Causes of the modification First, it is essential to explain that last February a court in the District of Columbia annulled two regulations approved in the Trump era. Those rules directly affected immigrants who applied for asylum and wanted to work as soon as possible. One of the laws limited the valuable immigration benefit and the other only in some cases. Both were announced in 2019 and put into practice a year later. Both regulations passed through the pen of former Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, and affected the benefits of immigrants.

To give you an idea of its impact, you should know that one of them radically eliminated the 30-day period to manage delivery. Which? Nothing less than the delivery of an Employment Authorization to asylees.

As if that were not enough, the other sadly “famous” law completely canceled the 150-day term, after requesting asylum. Its negative effect is that in that period the petition for a work permit was presented. From these decisions, at the time, thousands of immigrants saw how their migration processes, already in the United States, were delayed more and more every day. USCIS was taking too long to approve much-needed work permits.