The immigration attorney Liudmila Marcelo explained this Wednesday in an interview with CiberCuba that the increase in the political asylum fee, which has now risen to $100 per year following the approval of the new tax law by Trump, has an immediate advantage for applicants for international protection: it allows them to buy time.
This is because, as the forms to pay the new fee are not yet available, judges are postponing the final hearings, and this is currently good news as it allows asylum seekers to gain time while awaiting the ruling on the lawsuits filed by pro-immigrant organizations affecting Cubans with I-220A.
Liudmila Marcelo is not optimistic about an immediate ruling and prefers not to get her hopes up that a decision will be made before the end of the fiscal year. However, she acknowledges that, for those who manage to do so, gaining time is a blessing at this point.
The bad news is not just that there is a fee of $100 per year for the asylum process, but that the immigrant will also have to pay the amount corresponding to the number of years their asylum process has been open. "The bad news is that the payment will be retroactive, and there will be people who will pay $100, $200, or even $400," the lawyer clarified.
According to what she shared on her weekly program on Wednesdays at CiberCuba, this Tuesday, Liudmila Marcelo had a final hearing. "My client and I were ready. I traveled to Orlando. The client also traveled from Tampa to Orlando. The court session was scheduled for 8:30 in the morning. But just before the final hearing began, during which asylum was to be defended, the government representative, the prosecutor from DHS, approached me and said there was a problem to discuss before starting the hearing, even before the judge came out. He came over to talk with me and mentioned it was related to the fees."
"I told him, yes, I know that the $100 fee has already started. This case is already old. He said, yes, it is old, but it has been pending for more than two years. Therefore, the bad news is that they will apply it retroactively. Although the asylum was filed two or three years ago, you didn’t have to pay that initial $100 fee, but now they are going to charge you $100 for each year your asylum was pending in court. Therefore, there will be people with fees of $200, $300, $400... depending on the number of years."
"What’s happening? That fee has to be paid before the final Court date now. And this is where the situation comes into play. The Court system still hasn’t implemented the procedure for how it’s going to be paid. The prosecutor approaches me and says, 'I’m not going to ask the judge to dismiss the case,' and I replied, 'Of course not, because that’s not our responsibility.' Then he said that most likely what was going to happen was that this Court would be scheduled for a later date, and that’s exactly what happened. We bought a little more time. I know it didn’t just happen to me. It’s happening to several lawyers, and it’s becoming more pressing starting yesterday (referring to Tuesday)," Marcelo added.
Last week, the lawyer explained on CiberCuba that she had rejected several asylum cases due to the lack of payment of the fees. Finally, due to persistent insistence, they accepted them with the condition that when the form to pay the fees is released, they would send a notification to the clients to proceed with the payment.
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