Loren Locke quoted in Law360 regarding interruptions to visa processing due to COVID-19
"There are just so many things in immigration law that are so strict and unforgiving about paperwork that we don't know yet how it will all be fixed on the back end," said Loren Locke, an immigration lawyer at Ford Harrison and former consular officer. "There are going to be a lot of people who need fixing."
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But that's not an option for everyone, particularly if an individual's country of citizenship is also included in the ban, limiting which other countries they could visit for two weeks. Locke said she has a Chinese client who had planned to spend two weeks in the Netherlands, but those plans were foiled when the country was added to the ban.
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"There are a lot of emergency scenarios like that that immigration practitioners are dealing with this week and last week," said Locke, who had a client on an O-1 visa for people with extraordinary abilities get stuck in the U.K.
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"It's been cheaper, faster and with less pushback from the government to actually travel and get a new visa, come in with that, rather than get an extension of status from inside the U.S.," said Locke, noting that USCIS has ramped up scrutiny of employment-based immigration requests under the Trump administration.
But with consular offices closing, and travel becoming riskier as governments impose entry restrictions and urge people to stay home to mitigate the virus' spread, "the calculus has completely changed," Locke said.
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"We're particularly poorly situated for a knee-jerk transition to digital. We're just not ready at all," said Locke.