Immigrants to Get Extension for Expiring or Expired U.S. Work Permits

The change will immediately help about 87,000 immigrants whose work authorization has lapsed or is set to in the next 30 days. Overall, the government estimates that as many as 420,000 immigrants renewing work permits will be protected from losing their ability to work for the duration of the policy.

“We need time to get back to normal or better than normal on our processing times, and no one should lose their ability to work because we need that extra time,” a USCIS official said.

Millions of immigrants in the U.S. are eligible for work permits, including applicants for green cards and asylum, spouses of H-1B visa holders, and Dreamers who are recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. They are employed across the gamut of industries, from technology to healthcare to truck driving, and their absence has been felt by employers already struggling to hire enough people to fill America’s 11.5 million open jobs.

Jon Baselice, vice president of immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said employers would welcome the announcement. “Many companies with staffing issues have let good workers go simply because of these significant processing backlogs, exacerbating their workforce problems,” he said.

Immigrants eligible to renew their work permits can file for that renewal six months before their documents formally expire. Typically, most—though not all—work permits remain valid for 180 days past their official expiration date, a protection the government built into the process years ago to ensure that a person’s work authorization would never lapse, even with government delays.

However, as the backlog has grown, it has routinely taken the government longer than that to issue work-permit renewals, leaving immigrants out of work in the meantime.

This policy change allows eligible immigrants to work on expired documents for up to 540 days, rather than 180. That means even the tens of thousands of people past their 180-day window have as much as another year of work authorization as of Wednesday.

Some immigrants eligible for work permits, including DACA recipients and some spouses of H-1B visa holders, won’t benefit from the new policy, because they were never eligible for the 180-day extension on their expired work permits. But other categories of immigrants such as asylum seekers—who make up 65% of all pending renewals—will benefit.

Jairo Umaña, an immigrant seeking asylum from Nicaragua, has worked as a roofer in Miami since he came to the U.S. in the summer of 2018. But about three weeks ago, he was forced to stop working when the 180-day extension on his work permit expired, leaving him without income and uncertain when he might be able to go back.

Tuesday’s announcement cuts that uncertainty short.

“This will take some of that pressure off, to be able to sleep a bit better at night,” he said when he heard the news. Mr. Umaña is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, an organization that sued the administration last November over its work-permit delays.

But the change won’t solve all his related issues, Mr. Umaña said. His driver’s license, for example, is tied to his work permit, meaning it expired months ago when his document did.

There is no one reason to explain the unprecedented backup, though delays at the immigration agency stretch far beyond work permits.

The Trump administration depleted the agency’s coffers by accepting fewer visa applications and spending more money on national-security vetting, which it considered a priority. Then, the Covid-19 pandemic caused the government to temporarily close U.S. consulates and immigration offices altogether, leading to a sharp drop in immigration applications and revenue. Today, the agency is still significantly short-staffed and underfinanced compared with the start of the Trump administration.

Write to Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman+1@wsj.com