While the government claims to want to focus its limited resources on the processing of visas for survivors of violent crime and human trafficking, the data on the ground tells an entirely different story. Newly released figures by USCIS show that T Visa processing times have slowed down to an effective standstill, with cases taking close to three years to complete. We are seeing this with our own clients as well, many of them waiting as long as three years. With no interim protections while an application remains pending, survivors of human trafficking cannot legally work to support themselves, and are at the mercy of immigration enforcement, risking further violence, retraumatization, and re-trafficking. The government must meet the obligations that Congress intended when it created the T Visa and provide survivors with the protections they were promised.
-Evangeline Chan, Associate Vice President of Anti-Trafficking, Immigration and Legal Services