Temporary Increase of the Automatic Extension Period of Employment Authorization and Documentation for Certain Employment Authorization Document Renewal Applicants

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <CFR>8 CFR Part 274a</CFR> <DEPDOC>[CIS No. 2767-24; DHS Docket No. USCIS-2024-0002]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1615-AC78</RIN> <SUBJECT>Temporary Increase of the Automatic Extension Period of Employment Authorization and Documentation for Certain Employment Authorization Document Renewal Applicants</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, DHS. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Temporary final rule with request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This rule temporarily amends existing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regulations to provide that the automatic extension period applicable to expiring Employment Authorization Documents (Forms I-766 or EADs) for certain renewal applicants who have filed Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization (EAD application), will be increased from up to 180 days to up to 540 days from the expiration date stated on their EADs. DHS is taking these steps to help prevent renewal applicants from experiencing a lapse in their employment authorization and documentation. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective dates:</E> This temporary final rule (TFR) is effective April 8, 2024, through September 20, 2027, except for the amendments to 8 CFR 274a.13(d)(5), which are effective from April 8, 2024 through October 15, 2025. <E T="03">Submission of public comments:</E> Comments must be received on or before June 7, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments on the entirety of this temporary final rule package, identified by DHS Docket No. USCIS-2024-0002, through the Federal eRulemaking Portal: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Follow the website instructions for submitting comments. The electronic Federal Docket Management System will accept comments before midnight Eastern time on June 7, 2024. Comments must be submitted in English, or an English translation must be provided. Comments that will provide the most assistance to USCIS in implementing these changes will reference a specific portion of the proposed rule, explain the reason for any recommended change, and include data, information, or authority that support such recommended change. Comments submitted in a manner other than as provided above, including emails or letters sent to DHS or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials, will not be considered comments on the TFR and may not receive a response from DHS. Please note that DHS and USCIS cannot accept any comments that are hand-delivered or couriered. In addition, USCIS cannot accept comments contained on any form of digital media storage devices, such as CDs/DVDs and USB drives. USCIS is also not accepting mailed comments at this time. If you cannot submit your comment by using <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> please contact Samantha Deshommes, Chief, Regulatory Coordination Division, Office of Policy and Strategy, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security, by telephone at (240) 721-3000 (not a toll-free call) for alternate instructions. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Charles Nimick, Chief, Business and Foreign Workers Division, Office of Policy and Strategy, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security, 5900 Capital Gateway Drive, Camp Springs, MD 20746; telephone 240-721-3000 (not a toll-free call). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Public Participation</HD> DHS invites you to participate in this rulemaking by submitting written data, views, or arguments on all aspects of this temporary final rule. DHS also invites comments that relate to the economic, environmental, or federalism effects that might result from this temporary final rule. Comments must be submitted in English, or an English translation must be provided. Comments that will provide the most assistance to DHS will reference a specific provision of the temporary final rule, explain the reason for any recommended change, and include data, information, or authority that supports the recommended change. Comments submitted in a manner other than explicitly provided in this section, including emails or letters sent to USCIS or DHS officials, will not be considered comments on the TFR and may not receive a response. In addition to seeking comments on all aspects of this TFR, DHS also invites the public to comment on the following: • Whether DHS regulations should be revised to permanently lengthen the period of the automatic extension period to up to 540 days for employment authorization and/or EAD validity for eligible renewal applicants; • Whether a different permanent extension period should be implemented, for some or all applicants covered by the automatic extension provision on either a temporary or permanent basis; and • Whether other solutions should be considered to mitigate the risk of expiring employment authorization and/or EAD validity for some or all applicants covered by the automatic extension provision. DHS also specifically seeks comments on the regulatory alternatives described in section III.C. and V.B. of this preamble. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Instructions</HD> All submissions should include the agency name and DHS Docket No. USCIS-2024-0002 for this rulemaking. Providing comments is entirely voluntary. DHS will post all submissions, without change, to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and will include any personal information you provide. Because the information you submit will be publicly available, you should consider limiting the amount of personal information in your submission. DHS may withhold information provided in comments from public viewing if it determines that such information is offensive or may affect the privacy of an individual. For additional information, please read the Privacy and Security notice available through the link in the footer of <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket and to read comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> referencing DHS Docket No. USCIS-2024-0002. You may also sign up for email alerts on the online docket to be notified when comments are posted or a subsequent rulemaking is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose and Summary of the Regulatory Action</HD> DHS has determined that the up to 180-day automatic extension under 8 CFR 274a.13(d) is currently not enough time for the growing number of renewal EAD applicants. Without this TFR, approximately 800,000 renewal EAD applicants will be in danger of having their applications remain pending beyond the 180-day automatic extension period, resulting in applicants losing employment authorization and/or EAD validity in the approximately 2-year period beginning May 2024 because of USCIS processing delays and through no fault of their own. Such widescale lapses in employment authorization and EAD validity would result in substantial and unnecessary harm to noncitizens who timely filed for extensions of employment authorization, their families, their employers, and the public at large. To avert these gaps in employment authorization and/or EAD validity for certain renewal EAD applicants, and the resulting harmful effects gaps can cause, DHS is temporarily amending existing DHS regulations to increase the automatic extension period applicable to expiring employment authorization and/or EADs (Form I-766) for certain renewal applicants who have filed EAD applications from up to 180 days to up to 540 days from the expiration date stated on their EADs. The increase will be available to any eligible renewal EAD applicant with an application filed on or after October 27, 2023, and pending on or after April 8, 2024 and any eligible applicant who files a renewal EAD application during the 540-day period beginning on or after April 8, 2024 and ending September 30, 2025. DHS has decided to focus on near-term uncertainty and critical needs of applicants, their families, and their employers by ensuring that, through this TFR, none of them will imminently or in the near-term experience the harmful effects caused by gaps in employment authorization and/or EAD validity due to processing delays. At the same time, this rule provides DHS with an additional window during which it can consider long-term solutions by soliciting public comments, evaluating the effects of ongoing and future policy and operational changes described throughout this rule, and continuing to identify new strategies and efficiencies. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Summary of Legal Authority</HD> The authority for the Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary) to issue this TFR is found in section 274A(h)(3)(B) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1324a(h)(3)(B), which recognizes the Secretary's authority to extend employment authorization to noncitizens in the United States, and section 101(b)(1)(F) of the Homeland Security Act (HSA), 6 U.S.C. 111(b)(1)(F), which establishes as a primary mission of DHS the duty to “ensure that the overall economic security of the United States is not diminished by efforts, activities, and programs aimed at securing the homeland.” Under section 103(a) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1103(a), the Secretary is authorized to administer the immigration and nationality laws and establish such regulations as the Secretary deems necessary for carrying out such authority. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Summary of the TFR Provisions</HD> This rule amends 8 CFR 274a.13(d) as follows: • New 8 CFR 274a.13(d)(6): DHS is adding a new paragraph 8 CFR 274a.13(d)(6). With this new paragraph, DHS is temporarily increasing the regular automatic extension period for employment ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 361k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━