Requirements for Prince William County Asylum

The requirements for being eligible for asylum are that a person needs to prove that he or she has a reasonable fear of future persecution on account of his or her race, religion, national origin, political opinion, or his or her membership in a particular social group. A lot of times the most difficult thing to prove for many people is the nexus,  and the nexus is the connection between his or her membership in this particular group with his or her fear of persecution.

Sometimes it is easy to prove the connection between a person’s membership in a group and his or her persecution but if it is a specific social group other than race, religion, national origin, or political opinion, then he or she needs to prove that social group should qualify for protection.

The process of being granted asylum does involve the need from an experienced immigration attorney. Getting the proper help from a Prince William County asylum lawyer will ease the process.

Asylum Process and Requirements

A person needs to prove all of the threshold requirements and the way that he or she is going to prove that is going to depends whether or not he or she is applying affirmatively or defensively. An affirmative application is someone who has entered the United State and is submitting an initial asylum application after they have entered and before they are placed into removal proceedings before the immigration court.

For instance, the most common way this happens is if a person entered the country either illegally by crossing the border or if he or she entered on a visa with the representation that he or she was entering for another reason and then he or she submits his or her asylum application. In those cases, a person will submit the asylum application directly to the USCIS office in his or her region and he or she will be interviewed at his or her local USCIS office. It is not an adversarial setting, there is just a USCIS adjudicator that will conduct a thorough interview on his or her case, but there will not be a prosecutor or judge present in a courtroom setting.

If a person is in removal proceedings, so if he or she has been detained upon entering the country perhaps illegally or if he or she has been detained even if he or she tries to enter into a visitor visa and was detained for one reason or another and he or she is put into immigration detention, then he or she will be immediately placed in front of the immigration judge and he or she will have to present his or her case there, he or she will have the option to present his or her case in front of USCIS first. The process depends on which venue a person is applying with first.

Asylum Time Length

That is going to be a geographically specific answer to some extent but in most asylum offices right now if a person is applying affirmatively, there is at least a two-year wait.

If a person is applying defensively, so if he or she is in immigration court proceedings, if he or she resided in Prince William County, he or she will be in the Arlington immigration court and right now there are cases that are set out for asylum trials all the way in 2022 and they are setting individual hearings for a lot of judges right now in 2022. However, that is likely to change and it is possible that will quickly change because they are talking about hiring new judges. If they do hire any judges, it is going to change the priorities for adjudication and that might speed up in the near future but right now it is the process.