Georgetown Law & UBN Life on Hold

Failure to Recognize and Act On Low Application Rates Due to disastrous implementation, as well as an understandable hesitancy and suspicion of the legitimacy of the program lingering from the Trump Administration, most eligible Liberians have not applied for relief under LRIF. The Center for Migration Studies estimates 10,000 Liberians are eligible for LRIF, and that 300 Liberian family members qualify as beneficiaries. 89 In the first four months of the program, only 1,177 Liberians applied for LRIF. 90 This represents only 12% of the eligible applicants. 91 Even more troubling is USCIS’s failure to approve a single application during this time period. 92 As of October 2020, 2,532 applications had been received by USCIS - and alarmingly, only 261 were approved. 93 Stakeholders have requested that USCIS share monthly application rate data in order to target Liberian communities more effectively and to encourage higher application rates. CONCLUSION LRIF is a groundbreaking and hard-won legalization bill. On its face, LRIF should lead to the adjustment of status of nearly 10,000 eligible Liberians. However, due to willful mismanagement by the Trump Administration during the first year of the program, and due to continuing failures to act expeditiously by the Biden Administration, LRIF may expire once again without its significant benefits reaching the people they are intended to serve. USCIS must take swift action to correct course, listen to stakeholders, reach out to communities, and remove logistical and evidentiary burdens from applicants. USCIS must allow LRIF to live up to its promise.

89 Donald Kerwin & Mike Nicholson, The Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Program: Estimates of the Potentially Eligible, Ctr. for Migration Studies (June 12, 2020), https://cmsny.org/the-liberianrefugee-immigration-fairness-program-estimates-of-the- potentially-eligible/. 90 Id. 91 Id. 92 Id. 93 Applications for Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness (LRIF): Fact Sheet, Cong. Res. Serv., (Dec. 2020); available at https:// crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46487.

Life On Hold: Black Immigrants & the Promise of Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness

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