(COLUMBUS, OH – May 25, 2018) CAIR-Columbus today announced the successful resolution of a lawsuit against the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem for unreasonably delaying an immigrant visa for the Palestinian wife of a U.S. citizen. The couple was married in 2015 and promptly filed the appropriate applications immediately thereafter. Once USCIS sent the application to the US Consulate in Jerusalem it sat unadjudicated for well over two years causing the couple to remain separated unnecessarily – the husband living in the United States and the wife remaining in Palestine.
In February, CAIR-Columbus filed a mandamus lawsuit in the Federal Court for the District of Columbia against the consulate and the U.S. Department of State in order to force the consulate to process the application. The lawsuit was successfully resolved three months later with the wife receiving her visa enabling her to travel to the U.S. to be reunited with her husband. The couple said they are “extremely grateful that a two and a half year struggle is finally over.”
During the pendency of the application the couple repeatedly inquired with the consulate about the status of the application but were simply told it was in “administrative processing.”
Attorneys for CAIR-Columbus say that once cases are put in administrative processing, it is often an “indefinite black hole.” Consular officers are not required to tell applicants why they were put in administrative processing, nor is there any specific deadline for consular posts to complete the additional screening required by administrative processing.
“These cases illustrate the problem with the extreme amount of discretion given to consular officers. Families are sometimes separated for years at a time, for no apparent reason, and no matter how the case is eventually resolved, there is no way to get back that lost time,” said Jennifer Nimer, CAIR-Columbus executive director and attorney for the plaintiffs. “The Trump administration’s new ‘extreme vetting’ policies will only make this problem infinitely worse.”
CAIR-Columbus has seen an increase in immigration delays of all types, and has filed immigration-related lawsuits for 32 plaintiffs just since the beginning of 2017. The majority of those cases have already been successfully resolved in favor of the Plaintiffs.
Muslims who are facing similar delays are being urged to contact CAIR-Columbus for assistance by filing an incident report online at www.cair-columbus.com.