City of Seattle v. DHS

Last Updated

October 30, 2019

CLINIC, together with other immigrant-serving organizations and the City of Seattle, has sued United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, to block recent changes to its fee waiver policy. USCIS currently waives the naturalization fee for those who cannot afford to pay it, which is approximately 40 percent of applicants. Under rules in place since 2010, lawful permanent residents who receive means-tested benefits from another government agency are automatically entitled to a fee waiver, making the process easy for USCIS to administer and for applicants and service providers to complete. The new rules will make it much harder to qualify for a fee waiver, and will severely curtail naturalization applications, particularly from low-income applicants.

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