This will be useful to all our clients ready to schedule appointments in Ciudad Juarez. The following information was provided by Edward R. an AILA member in El Paso in response to one of AILA members in San Diego questions about the timing of and scheduling of InfoPass appointments in Ciudad Juarez:
“As to the pilot program in CJ [Ciudad Juarez] for 601s, the process is to book an INFOPASS appointment to submit the waiver filing after denial. This person [our chapter member] is trying to time the appointment so that the client will not have to wait long between denial and possible approval of the waiver. The pilot allows for 601s that are obviously approvable to be approved on the very day of the INFOPASS appointment. This results in the approved IV within a few days after that, if not the same day, and the applicant who was facing a long delay for waiver adjudication is suddenly just waiting in line for formal admission as LPR.
Problem is that everyone wants to do the same thing and the INFOPASS appointment schedule, which was the off the shelf solution for a DHS program, is not robust enough to handle the volume thrown at it. It creates a bottleneck and no one can get appointments. DHS knows about this and is trying to resolve the issue, but the more appointments they release, in theory, the demand will devour and all will end up in the same position down the line.
DHS does not want to terminate the program, which is still up and running, but it is at a loss at the moment as to how to solve the demand problem. I am not sure it can be solved. Best advice for a client is to go to CDJ prepared for a long wait, be it months to get the INFOPASS appointment or in case the program is cancelled and the usual 10 month wait comes into play.”
Let’s hope they keep this program, our clients report approvals in a matter of days.