It is our pleasure to announce 4 new Kenyan asylum approvals in the month of August.
The first of these cases was filed with the Los Angeles Asylum Office (AO) in July of 2012. This case was placed in the recent "backlog" of cases at the AO, but we were finally notified of the case's approval (after two separate interviews by different asylum officers) on August 13, 2013.
In another backlogged case at the AO, our filing was perfected in August of 2012, and it was not until August 8, 2013, that we were notified of its approval. Hence, it is clear that asylum claims in the Los Angeles District are now pending for much longer durations than they have in a very long time. Applicants are advised to be patient, and having preserved their filing of the case within one year of arrival as they are required to do, they must simply await an interview and ultimately a decision at some later point. Since the AO backlog, we continue to be unwilling to predict the approximate duration of any potential asylum claim at the AO. In time, we hope to get a better sense of how long on average we should expect such cases to pend with that office. The silver lining however, of the long wait for adjudication, is that it is now more likely that the so-called "150 day clock" for the filing of asylum related applications for employment authorization, and the so-called "180 day clock" for approval of those same applications, are now more likely to expire, increasing the chances of the applicant to actually receive their work permits while awaiting adjudication of their cases at the AO. Applicants should remember however, that if they have requested a continuance before the expiration of the 150 day clock, the running of that clock will toll (stop) on the day the continuance is requested, and re-start on the day of their interview.
Lastly, I completed trial before Judge Parchert of the Los Angeles Immigration Court, yesterday, in the asylum claim of a Kenyan married couple. This claim was one in which we by-passed an interview at the AO and requested referral to Immigration Court, since the applicants were applying for asylum many years after they had both arrived in the US and after their non-immigrant statuses had expired. It has been our experience that unless the applicant is maintaining status, or filing quickly after the expiration of status, the AO has not typically respected or fairly adjudicated the applicants' exceptions to the one year filing requirement. Thus, applicants face the prospects of hiring an attorney for the AO with little or no hope of approval at the AO level, only to find themselves referred to the more stressful and formal forum of immigration court, perhaps unable to afford counsel where they need representation the most. In this case, we successfully overcame the one year filing requirement and both spouses were granted asylum. The result in this case however, could not have been achieved without the graciousness and compassion of the both the Immigration Judge and the Government's (ICE's) prosecuting attorney.
We have placed all four of these clients now, on a pathway to the US Citizenship and spared them from the potentially hazardous consequences of returning to Kenya.
By: Duane Hamilton
