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Under current law, asylum-seekers may petition for employment authorization documents if 150 days have passed since they filed their full asylum application, unless they are responsible for any delays in the process, and they have not received a decision on their applications. Asylees have the immediate right to work with or without the documents, though many choose to do so for purposes of convenience or to identify themselves, according to USCIS.
Even the 150-day wait time can put asylum-seekers in dire financial straits: “homeless, unable to feed themselves and their children, and struggling to get health care,” according to an April report from Human Rights First. Any increase in the wait times could be crippling, it said.
According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, the average nationwide wait time for an initial hearing in immigration court is just over 700 days — prohibitively long for most asylum-seekers to go without income.
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