How the government shutdown impacts immigration

The Senate failed to pass a spending bill this week before government funding expired at midnight on Wednesday, even though the House of Representatives passed a “clean” Continuing Resolution (CR) on Sept. 19. This has resulted in the first full government shutdown since 2018.

Senate Democrats are demanding that Pres. Trump and Congressional Republicans agree to extend Obamacare subsidies in order to reopen the government. However, the Democrat-proposed CR that is being offered as an alternative to the House-passed clean CR strikes all of the Medicaid adjustments that were included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including the provisions that largely prevent illegal aliens from accessing Medicaid. The White House put out a helpful factsheet to explain how this works.

IAP has made it clear that Congress should pass the clean CR, not give taxpayer-funded handouts to illegal aliens.

With neither side showing any signs of budging, we could be in this stalemate for a while. So how does it impact immigration?

The legal immigration system, which includes adjudication of applications for immigrant (i.e., green cards) and nonimmigrant visas, as well as petitions by sponsors of visa applicants and applications for adjustment of status, is bifurcated between the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The State Department handles applications for visas, while USCIS processes petitions by sponsors of visa applicants and applications by visa holders to change their immigration status from within the United States. 

This distinction is important during a government shutdown because USCIS primarily operates on the fees that it collects through the application process. That means the processing of petitions by those who want to sponsor visa holders (e.g., employers that want foreign workers and prior immigrants who want to sponsor family members) will continue. The processing of adjustment of status applications (e.g., foreign students who want to switch to H-1B status and H-1Bs who want to obtain employment-based green cards) also will continue. The processing of visa applications by aliens outside the country will also continue since consular work at the State Department is considered essential. However, unlike USCIS adjudicators, consular officials will not be paid for their work during the shutdown.

USCIS also administers the E-Verify system, which many employers use to verify the work eligibility of new hires. E-Verify is not fee-funded, since it is free to employers, so it is offline until the government reopens. Employers who use E-Verify will have three days to verify anyone hired during the shutdown through the system once E-Verify comes back online.

The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, used by states and municipalities to verify eligibility of noncitizens for public assistance, and by some localities to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls, is expected to remain operational.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have both been deemed essential by the Trump Administration, so Border Patrol agents will continue to apprehend illegal border crossers, and ICE officers will continue with the President’s mass deportation efforts.

The House of Representatives has been in recess for the past two weeks since it passed the clean CR. It is scheduled to return on Monday, but Speaker Mike Johnson has made it clear that the House has no intention of acquiescing to Senate Democrats’ demands. The Senate has failed multiple times to reach the 60 votes necessary to pass either the House-passed CR or the alternative CR offered by Democrats that includes the Obamacare subsidies and healthcare for illegal aliens. 

Immigration Articles

Where immigrants went during an unprecedented influx at the US border, by the numbers
This week, the Associated Press obtained internal data from CBP that details exactly where illegal aliens were intending to go after they were released at the border during the last two years of the Biden Border Crisis. The AP has made a great map showing destinations by State and major metropolitan areas. Make sure you check the article out to see the numerical impact near you.

MEMORANDUM Re: Democrat Plan to Fund Healthcare for Illegal Immigrants
As was mentioned in the update this week, the White House has put out a document demonstrating how the Democrat’s CR, as opposed to the clean Republican CR, does fund illegal alien access to medical benefits. This memo is a helpful way to understand what’s really going on, in the face of extremely biased reporting to the contrary by many media outlets.

Illegal alien arrested by ICE found registered as active Democrat voter in blue state
There was major news over the last week, when the superintendent of the Des Moines Public Schools in Iowa, Ian Andre Roberts, was arrested by ICE. It turns out Roberts had overstayed a visa in 1999, had weapons charges in 2020, was given a final order of removal in 2024, and was actively registered to vote in Maryland. This should serve as a reminder of how backwards immigration enforcement has been for decades, and further serve as proof that illegal aliens do, in fact, vote illegally.

Next Week

The House and Senate return on Monday. The Senate will vote again on the House-passed CR and the Democrats’ alternative CR to fund the government into November. It appears likely that the Senate will repeat these votes until eight Democrats break from party leadership and agree to the House-passed CR (two Democrats and one Independent have already joined all but one Republican to support this bill).