Immigration Benefits

Second Report Required by the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act of 1998 Gao ID: GGD-00-25R October 19, 1999

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the number of Haitian nationals who have applied and been approved to adjust their status to legal permanent residence under the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act (HRIFA) of 1998.

GAO noted that: (1) on May 12, 1999, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) published interim regulations to implement HRIFA and requested public comments; (2) the comment period ended July 12, 1999; (3) between May 12, 1999, and July 23, 1999, INS conducted nationwide HRIFA training for INS employees, representatives of community-based organizations, and attorneys who plan to assist Haitian nationals in completing and filing their applications; (4) INS and EOIR also established application filing procedures and internal processing procedures to adjudicate the applications and track their status, including numbers of applications received or filed and approved by category of applicant; (5) as of October 1, 1999, INS had received 8,769 HRIFA applications and EOIR had 9 HRIFA applications filed; (6) INS had not approved any applications, and EOIR had approved eight applications; and (7) details on the categories of the applicants and approvals are provided in this report.



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