The United States Senate confirmed this Friday to the activist, Ur Jaddou Mendoza, of an Iraqi father and Mexican mother, What Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that manages the immigration system and naturalization processes.
With a vote of 47 to 34, Mendoza Jaddou became the first person approved by the Senate since 2019 to head this agency, which has not had a confirmed leader in more than two years.
When the approval is known, the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, congratulated Jaddou Mendoza, of whom he highlighted his two decades of experience in law, policy and administration of the immigration system.
“She will administer our nation’s immigration system fairly and equitably,” Mayorkas said about who will be a key player in advancing President Joe Biden’s immigration plans.
“As the daughter of hardworking immigrants, Ur understands how immigrant families enrich our country and the challenges they face.”Mayorkas added.
Until her nomination last April, Ur Jaddou had been the director of DHS Watch, a group project America’s Voice who advocates for immigration reform, in addition to having experience at USCIS, where he has worked in their legal services in the past.
Under former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), USCIS implemented a series of changes that hampered permanent residence for immigrants as well as the approval of their asylum applications.
The Trump administration also changed the naturalization test and proposed raising the fees for a large number of procedures, which was the subject of lawsuits.
The current Biden Administration has revoked several of the measures implemented by his predecessor, but Mendoza Jaddou will have to deal with the backlog of asylum applications, which can now take years to process in many states.
Jaddou Mendoza will head a federal agency that has about 16,700 employees, most of whom (13,400) last year saw their positions threatened due to lack of funds, according to their executives at the time.
Migration crisis in Mexico
Currently, Mexico faces a migration crisis. Until last April, 9,189 requests were received at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid (Comar), the highest monthly figure in its history.
“My intention is to stay, my baby was born here and I feel that here in Mexico there are opportunities”said Roxana Villafuerte, originally from El Salvador and has been waiting for almost a year for Comar to resolve her process so that she can work and support her baby, who is nine months old and has a Mexican father.
Roxana, like 53% of all asylum seekers in Mexico – 81% in the case of Salvadorans – are fleeing gang violence, according to a recent study by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
“That’s how things came to me, I had no option to say ‘I’ll stay or see what I do’, the only option was to leave my country,” said the woman.
The Comar received 31,842 asylum applications in the first four months of 2021, an increase of almost 75% compared to 18,142 in the same period in 2020 and 18,527 in 2019.
With information from EFE
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