Thread by @crampell

Earlier this year I wrote about visa applications getting rejected for having inapplicable blanks on them. Thanks to a newly resolved FOIA suit, we now have a better sense of the scale of this policy and its consequences.
They're enormous. (thread)

This summer, lawyers from @UrbanJusticeDVP & @ClearyGottlieb filed a FOIA suit to get info about how the "no blanks" was being applied to just one category of visa, the U-visa. U-visas are given to victims of serious crimes who assist law enforcement to catch/prosecute criminals

No-blanks policy went into place for U applications on Dec 30, w/ no advanced warning. In first few weeks, *98%* of these applications were rejected because of new policy -- applicant without middlename hadn't included middlename, no current address offered for dead parents, etc.

Eventually word spread and attorneys got wise to this trap, writing “N/A” or “None” in every field possible, no matter how superfluous. At least one got a custom-made "N/A" rubber stamp because the forms themselves sometimes didn't allow typing in "N/A" digitally

Even so, over the first ~6 months that the policy was in effect, about 50% of U-visa applications were still rejected for not conforming to "no blanks" policy. That came to 12,000 of about 24,000 U-visa applications total rejected for frivolous reasons

Some attorneys had the same application rejected multiple times. Kyle Dandelet, one of the attys who filed FOIA suit, told me he had to resubmit a single application 5x, partly because USCIS kept saying client he had to check yes/no box to a question for which answer was unknown

Note that nearly all U-visa applicants have legal representation (>90%).
Other immigrants subject to "no blanks" policy, including asylum-seekers, are more likely to file pro se. How many are being automatically rejected b/c they have no chance of knowing about this secret code?

That unfortunately we still don't know.

Dandelet and Joy Ziegeweid (other lawyer on FOIA suit) did get some other useful info though, included a complicated color-coded form telling people in USCIS mailroom what U-visa (I-918 form) fields had to be filled in when.

Alas, this document was originally not provided in color! Lawyers in FOIA case had to go back and negotiate release of a color version.

Based on this form, it seems USCIS mailroom workers are applying the "no blanks" policy more aggressively in practice than it's written -- lots of attys have told me of form rejections for blanks in fields that this document suggests were allowed to remain unfilled (like Apt. #)

Applicants who get rejected b/c of irrelevant blanks can try resubmitting their applications (and many do, as noted above). But in the mean time, they get pushed further back in the already years-long U-visa queue. And their kids can age out of eligibility washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-t…

In FOIA suit, Dandelet & Ziegeweid asked for any instructions USCIS officials have been given about how to treat such age-out cases. Dandelet: "They did not produce any records in response to that request, which means that they don’t have any internal guidance on that issue."

BTW USCIS has extended this no-blanks policy to more categories of immigration forms since I first wrote about the issue in Feb -- including forms filled out by third parties, over which applicant/atty do not have control (law enforcement, doctors). washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-t…

For some immigration forms, there's an announced system-wide policy; for others, no formal announcement, & rejections for blanks could be one-offs from rogue/confused USCIS officials. USCIS has not responded to my questions about how or when it was deciding to enforce the policy

Warning signs though that the policy will be rolled out more broadly, including to green card applicants, based on draft new I-485 form (which actually would mention no-blanks policy right on the form -- not the case for U-visa or other affected forms) federalregister.gov/documents/2020…

For those interested in more info, @AILANational & @ShevDD have put together a policy brief with more details on the no-blanks policy. They've collected many more examples of applications getting rejected for mindblowingly dumb reasons
aila.org/advo-media/ail…

Oh also, another group of immigrants whom USCIS has openly said will be rejected for having immaterial blanks on their forms: human-trafficking victims.
Weirdly, hear very little about this from the political contingent usually so concerned about the scourge of sex trafficking

Another immigration attorney sent me an example of an asylum application rejected for irrelevant blanks. In this case, USCIS said the applicant should have listed the current locations of her parents, brother, and sister -- who are all marked DECEASED.

Attorney said he was tempted to resubmit the application & fill in these blanks with "heaven, hopefully." Then thought better of it, just went with "N/A."