Congressmen Gonzalez and Stivers Include Amendment in Must-Pass Spending Legislation to Reduce Hiring Time of Qualified Immigration Judges

WASHINGTON - Today, Congressman Vicente Gonzalez (TX-15) and Steve Stivers (R-OH) had an amendment included in H.R. 3055, the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2020, that seeks to reduce the hiring time for immigration judges. The base text of the measure supports hiring up to 100 additional immigration judges, support personnel and associated facilities.

The amendment would order the Executive of Immigration Review (EOIR) to cut the hiring time for immigration judges in half while simultaneously including controls to ensure quality of judges does not decline. Currently, it takes approximately two years for immigration judges to be hired adding to the backlog.

"The backlog of immigration cases is recklessly dysfunctional and causes uncertainty to all parties," said Congressman Gonzalez. "We should be able to hold hearings within a few months from when someone arrives to our country.

While we cannot overhaul the system overnight, reducing the hiring time of qualified immigration judges can help us to drastically reduce wait times for migrants. Our bipartisan solution would do just that."

From 2017 to 2018, only 57 immigration judges were hired and there are currently 876,000 immigration cases awaiting to be processed.

The Congressmen also introduced an amendment to double the amount of immigration judges and support personnel but it was blocked from Floor consideration.

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