What do I need to know if I'm applying for a Green Card, based on asylum? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. My wife and I were just up in Michigan for a vacation with my parents and my sisters and our kids. We had a great time. One day, I was getting ready to go out to the beach and I turned on the television. I turned on C-SPAN and there was a lady from USCIS testifying before Congress about how a USCIS is out of money and all the stupid reasons why they're out of money and about the bozos that are running USCIS., I've talked about that in prior videos, and that's not the point of this video. The point of this video is something that she mentioned that I probably should have known already, and I certainly had seen the results of it.
It's something very interesting. USCIS rescinded a memo a couple of years ago that said that we're not going to go back and look at prior immigration benefits, conferred. I didn't know that there had been such a memo, but I sure have seen the effects of life without that memo, because now they're definitely going back and looking at prior grants of immigration and they're especially doing it to people that got asylum. What they're doing is, they're saying, "Hey, if you came here and you obtained asylum in the United States, we're going to go back with a fine tooth comb." That's an English expression, a fine tooth comb, which means we're going to go over line by line over your whole asylum application and we're going to compare it to your Green Card application, so if you're applying for a Green Card based on asylum, or if you're planning for citizenship even, they're going to compare your citizenship application, to your Green Card application, to your asylum application.
If there's any inconsistencies, they might deny you and try to put you in removal. We've seen it. It's happened. It's happened to people that we've talked to. It hasn't happened to any of our clients, but we've been in these interviews where the interview seems not at all related to the new benefit, but all about the old benefit. They're using it, it's all part of this anti-fraud BS that USCIS has pedaling. They think everybody who got an immigration benefit, especially through asylum as a criminal. This new tactic of USCIS going back and looking for prior grants of immigration benefits is ridiculous. It's one of the reasons why they're backlogged so much. It's one of the reasons why they're out of money, because they're spending all their time on stupid stuff like this. Just so you know, I talked to one of our lawyers in the office today, and she's going to go and track me down that memo so that I can shoot some videos about that, because it's very important and it impacts everything that we're doing here.
We need it, not just for these videos, but also to game plan, to advise clients and consults and those kinds of things. As soon as we get it, we'll share it with you. In the meantime, if you have questions about this, give us a call at (314) 961-8200. You can email us at infoathackinglawpractice.com. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you like this video, we ask that you please share it out on social and that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos, just like this one. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
