Queues and backlogs of asylum cases in US courts provide a breathing space for immigrants.

 

    Asylum seekers wait an average of four years for their first court hearing, and it takes another year before a case is decided. This opens a window for them to work in the US, save money and send it back to their families back home.

Cases are piling up in US immigration courts, making the country more attractive to many immigrants who now know they can work legally for years without being deported as long as their files are in court.

The 650 immigration judges handle more than 2.4 million files, according to the nonprofit Syracuse University's Transaction Records Access Center (TRAC). In this regard, the director of the Office of Immigration Review at the US Department of Justice, David L. Neal, said during a seminar, "We are facing a truly enormous scale."

Last year, 313,000 cases were decided, but the Department of Homeland Security filed 700,000 new cases with them, "more than double what we can handle," according to the official.

Asylum seekers make up 40 percent of all court cases, and they wait an average of four years for their first hearing, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MIB), and several more years before a case is decided. This opens a window for them to work in the US, save money and send it back to their families back home.

"It's clear that immigration court processing time has become an important pull factor encouraging migration across the region," Blas Nunez Neto, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Border and Immigration Policy, told the symposium hosted by MIP.