Self-petitions under the program had jumped around 360 percent between fiscal year 2020 and 2024.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is updating its policies related to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) following concerns about “rampant fraud” being committed by immigrants applying for the program, the agency said in a statement on Dec. 22.
U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who wish to bring family members to the United States through the family-based immigration process must file petitions to sponsor their relatives. However, this creates a situation where the petitioner could abuse the immigrant family members by threatening to withhold the petition.
VAWA, passed in 1994, aimed to resolve this problem. VAWA allows immigrants who have been abused by their U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident relatives to independently self-petition for immigrant classification without the abuser’s knowledge.
However, there have been “alarming new filing trends” related to VAWA applications, USCIS said.
Usually, the number of self-petitions received by the agency each year used to grow at a rate similar to other immigration benefits. But there has been an “unprecedented rise” in VAWA receipts since 2020, it said.
“From fiscal years 2020 to 2024, the overall number of Form I-360 VAWA self-petitions increased by approximately 360 percent and male self-petitioners increased by 259 percent,” USCIS said.
“We also saw a 2,239 percent increase in parents submitting VAWA self-petitions from fiscal year 2020 to 2024. These have not traditionally been populations filing for VAWA. When unqualified aliens misuse the VAWA program, it causes significant processing delays, harming survivors with legitimate claims.”
According to the updated rules regarding married couples, a self-petitioner is now required to establish that they entered into a good-faith marriage with the alleged abuser by providing primary evidence of a marital relationship.
The policy clarifies that the self-petitioner must be residing with the alleged abuser for the relationship to be considered qualified under VAWA.
“This is a shift from USCIS’ previous policy allowing the self-petitioner to have resided with the abuser in the past,” the Dec. 22 policy alert from the agency said.
