The American Immigration Council is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. On October 30, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued an interim final rule that eliminates the automatic extension for thousands of people who filed to renew their lawful work permits.
Previously, people who filed their work permit renewal requests on time would be given an automatic extension of their work permit’s validity period to ensure they wouldn’t experience gaps in their employment while USCIS processed their request. The new rule eliminating this extension period is effective immediately.
What changed?
Since 2016, USCIS has provided an extension period of up to 180 days for work permits to prevent people from losing lawful employment status while the agency processed their renewal applications. During the Biden administration, this period was temporarily extended twice to 540 days to mitigate the effects of the growing work permit backlog—caused by a combination of factors, including the first Trump administration’s operational policies, outdated fees, the COVID-19 pandemic, and an increase in filings. However, in December 2024, the agency permanently extended that period from 180 days to 540 amid persistent processing backlogs to provide continuity and consistency to employers and their employees.
This ensured people could remain lawfully in their jobs while waiting for USCIS to renew their work permit.
This new rule not only rolls back the Biden-era 540-day extension policy, but it also eliminates the 180-day period established in 2016. Before 2016, if the agency couldn’t process a work permit within 90 days, it would issue an interim work permit for up to 240 days to provide workers and their employers with some sense of certainty while USCIS processed their applications. However, USCIS explicitly rejects returning to that policy in this new rule too.
The agency’s main concern is that automatic renewals provide an immigration benefit to applicants before they have been properly “vetted and screened.” However, USCIS doesn’t meaningfully address that these applicants have not only been vetted previously and, in fact, continue to provide the information to process their work permit renewals, including their biometrics, but they are also likely to have other pending applications before the agency.
What is the impact?
USCIS’ latest data shows that about 54% of all work permit applications are taking longer than 180 days to process. Renewal requests make up 44% of pending work permit requests.
Without the automatic extension for timely renewed work permits, thousands of workers—previously authorized to work—will lose their jobs because USCIS will take months to process their renewal requests and will no longer offer automatic extensions.
Nearly 87% of all pending renewal requests fall into one of the 18 categories covered by the rule. These categories include people most visibly targeted by the Trump administration for mass arrest and detention: asylum applicants and Temporary Protected Status requestors and recipients. But the rule also singles out others, like green card applicants and the spouses of skilled workers, managers and executives, and treaty traders and investors.
Renewal requests make up a large segment of all pending work permits within certain categories. The five categories with the highest proportion of pending renewal requests—and most likely to be significantly impacted by this new interim final rule—are:
| Category | Percent of all pending work permit applications that are renewal requests |
|---|---|
| TPS recipients and prima facie eligible applicants | 75% |
| Withholding of removal/protection under the Convention Against Torture | 70% |
| Asylum applicants | 60% |
| E-1/E-2 Treaty Trader and investor spouses | 60% |
| H-1B skilled worker spouses | 58% |
What’s next?
The sudden implementation of this new rule adds to the uncertainty faced by employers and workers who depend on clear and predictable immigration policies. America’s small businesses are already facing lots of uncertainty resulting from rising inflation, changing tariff policies, and labor shortages. The Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies have exacerbated these issues, such as by aggressively moving to “de-document” at least 1 million workers who were stripped of TPS, and thousands who had their parole terminated.
While USCIS has published this rule as an interim final rule—meaning that it goes into effect immediately—the agency is requesting comments for 30 days, or until December 1. This comment period provides an important opportunity for business owners, workers, and community members to share how the rule undermines economic stability and to reaffirm the essential contributions immigrants make to local economies and communities.
