Michael Levitis
Hi, everybody, it’s Michael Levitis with Jurisq.com with immigration attorney Yakov Spektor. Yakov, welcome back. We bring you in here not just to answer frequently asked questions and immigration law. But also when I see something in the news that concerns immigration, I want to bring you in as our expert on immigration laws to explain what is going on behind the scenes from a legal standpoint, give your opinion because you live and you breathe immigration law. I saw it today in New York Post that New York City Mayor Adams, he came up with this proposal concerning migrants that are being bossed by taxes into New York migrants, usually from South America, and what he’s saying, Mayor Adams, he wants to lobby the federal government, so that these people can get their work papers immediately. Because what he’s saying is that it takes a while to get those work papers, and you will explain to us how long it takes and what’s the process to get your work permit. Mayor Adams is saying that New York City, thank God, unemployment is not great. There are jobs out there, people are looking for help. So here we have people who actually come into this country who are willing and able to work, so why not? Put them to work? Everybody benefits? Right? So let’s talk about that. Can you tell us ordinary to get work permits? How long would it take and what are the process of what is Mayor Adams trying to do here?

Yakov Spektor
It’s actually a really strange situation and might seem actually probably bizarre to any common sense person such as yourself or me or anyone, you have people who are willing to work, you have basically a mayor of New York City who is willing to put them to work, there is work for them, and yet if they do work, that’s going to be an immigration violation, which could hurt them later on. The reason for that is that they simply don’t have work permits and the work permit is something that the federal government is going to give an immigrant. Now work permit, unfortunately, that’s not as a lot of you might know, that a lot of immigrants might be listening to us, that’s not an easy thing to get. Usually that’s just something that’s available to you. If you’re waiting, let’s say, for your case to go through, you are waiting for your green card application to go through, you’re waiting for your asylum application to go through because once you have your green card or once you’re a citizen, you don’t need a work permit, right? You can just work just like anyone else. But while you wait and right now the wait times can run into years. You can apply for a work permit and that’s the whole purpose behind the government getting your work permit. Now that’s when you start having problems, because it’s the only the federal government’s that can get your work permits. As you said, Mayor Adams is going to lobby the federal government to issue those work permits to these immigrants faster because that’s essentially the only thing he can do. He cannot give them the work permits, even though they’re going to be working, potentially for the city, even though there is there ready and willing employers willing to employ these people. But the only entity that could issue those work permits is the federal government and the federal government right now the USCIS, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, that the immigration agency that’s tasked with issuing these work permits is severely underfunded. It can take months, it used to take almost a year to get work permits from the time that the people were applying to the time they were seeing the actual car. Right now that, they it seems like they have cleaned up the rights on what it takes six or seven or eight or nine months. So it’s a little less time than that.

Michael Levitis
Meanwhile, these people, they’re in New York City, New York City and State has to provide for them because they can work legally. Like you said, it’s a bizarre situation. I also want to add to it right now, our primary concern of this administration, is inflation, we see the prices going through the roof, partly is because of shortage of labor force wouldn’t be great if we can solve it right now today by employing these migrants. Who are people who are coming here? Why? For better life, to work. These people are workers not here to commit crimes. They are here to work and I believe to comport with all the laws because they know they’re going to violate laws, they will never get their green card, isn’t it? So it’s in their interest to really be model citizens and to work and these are the kinds of people who don’t want to put a work right away. Makes no sense.

Yakov Spektor
Now one thing that I can tell you if you’re waiting for your work permit. Don’t forget that sometimes, even though you might be working here illegally. A lot of people have to provide for their families, and they take jobs, even though they know they will be breaking in immigration regulation they are taking simply cannot wait for that work permit. They cannot wait for the government to clean up their act. Okay, that’s understandable. But if this is something that you are doing in order to feed your family, it sometimes it might not be a problem for you, because the only way how this could be a problem for you is if the government learns of that immigration violation, it might be a problem for your later immigration history. So if this is something that you absolutely need to do job to someone like me first, just so that you know what might be the repercussions of that act. But in the meantime, while we were all waiting for the federal government to clean up their act, and we’ve had we have hundreds and thousands of people who are ready and willing to work and yet they’re not able to. So I’m not sue if President Biden is listening to us right now, but if he does, brilliant, and you do change the regulations to allow people to work while they’re waiting for their work permit.

Michael Levitis
Yakov, thank you for the words of encouragement for President Biden and for all the other immigrants, migrants who came here for better life. I hope like you said, the government comes to their senses and realizes that we need them and we need them legalized as soon as possible, at least for work, at least for work purposes, be glad these people work. But like you said, meanwhile, if anybody is on that path, to become a permanent residence, you should definitely contact an attorney like Yakov Spektor, because Yakov as you saw, why is he here? He’s here was he knows what he’s talking about. He is our guru, our go to person immigration, contact the Yakov’s office. With any questions you have and Yakov be happy to answer, the phone number and the website is on the bottom of the screen. Yakov, thank you so much, everybody thank you for listening in and we’ll see you next time. Take care.