What you can do now for the President’s Immigration Plan
It’s true that you cannot sign up for any of the new proposals in the President’s immigration plan. For the central parts of the plan, the President is allowing USCIS 90 and 180 days after the announcement to set up the application process. For most applicants, this means they are waiting until either February of 2015 or May of 2015 to apply for the President’s plan. While it doesn’t seem like great situation to be in, for most people it is actually a blessing in disguise. This delay will give applicants time to collect the documents you need and help them be ready to apply for the program from day one.
(Worried about whether its safe to apply for the President’s plan? Don’t be! Click here to read my article on why you don’t need to worry about the future of the program.)
What many immigration advocates agree upon is that these programs will require supporting documents. What these amount to are physical documents that back up the requirements of the application process. Think of them like evidence: If you are asserting that you have lived in the United States since 2010, then you will need to prove that. And you prove that my submitting things like rental agreements, utility bills, and other tangible signs that you have lived in the United States as long as you say you have.
The key to this whole process is that applicants will need to have supporting documents for many different parts of the application. For example, DACA applicants will likely need to show school records, DAPA applicants will need to show that their children have the right citizenship documents, and many other examples. What is important is that collecting all these documents takes time. Not only the time to go through your own records, but to request documents from schools and workplaces as well as from government organizations. If you wait until the application process opens to even begin collecting these documents, it could take you months to catch up to folks who have already collected those documents and applied. That would put your application behind those of people who were able to apply in the time you were still collecting, delaying you getting the protections that the President wants you to have.
Would you like to know more? Talk to an attorney today. They can help you collect the documents you will need and –importantly– the right documents. It’s important to understand that at this time, there is no official list of what documents will be required for each application. Never- the- less, an attorney can help you find the ones we know about and help you make sure your application is ready to go as soon as the process is open.