If you did not enter the United States lawfully (like entering without a visa or without inspection), or you overstayed your visa here, you must apply for asylum within 1 year of your entry.
However, if you entered the U.S. using an immigrant or a nonimmigrant visa (such as a tourist or student visa) or you have Temporary Protected Status, the asylum one-year filing rule does not apply to you. You must apply for asylum within a reasonable period after your legal status ends.
To have a strong Asylum case, you have to have filed your I-589 Application for Asylum, Withholding of Removal and Convention Against Torture Relief within 1 year of entering USA. Sometimes, immigration judges call it a “1-Year Rule.”
If you are living in the US longer than 1 year and decide to file for Asylum, how can you avoid this hard-line 1-year Rule?
There are 2 general categories of reasons to overcome the 1-Year Rule.
1. Change in Circumstances (your home country conditions changed, or your personal situation changed); OR
2. Extraordinary Circumstances that caused your delay in filing – reasons that are personal to you, which caused you to delay.
A. CHANGE IN CIRCUMSTANCES.
US Immigration federal regulations provide a long list of ways in which your circumstances could have changed that may make you eligible for an exemption of the asylum one year filing rule. These include but are not limited to:
· Changed conditions in your country of nationality or last habitual residence
· Changes in applicable US law
· Changes in personal circumstances
· The ending of your spousal or parent-child relationship to the principal applicant in a previous application
· You have become a refugee since leaving your country
B. EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES
The second exemption from the asylum 1-Year filing rule is if you have extraordinary circumstances that caused a delay in applying for asylum. These situations include:
· Some factors or events that caused you to miss the deadline (some personal difficulties you had).
· Serious illness or mental or physical disability
· Death or serious illness or incapacity of your legal representative or member of your immediate family
· Legal disability
· Ineffective assistance of counsel – your lawyer did not do their job.
The burden and responsibility to establish WITH EVIDENCE and facts that you deserve for USCIS or the Judge to make an exception to the asylum 1-year filing rule are on you alone, and it can be challenging.
Finding a lawyer who will help you deal with this challenge is the key to solving this puzzle. We can help you immediately with the filing of your asylum.
Call us: ☎ 718-769-6352
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