By Asher Stockler

Law360 (December 7, 2020, 8:46 PM EST) -- Immigration officials asked a federal judge on Monday to toss a visa-holder's bid to speed up his work authorization renewal, calling his prospective unemployment and loss of income "speculative and relatively minor" harms.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that the pandemic has contributed to a delayed approval process, and that 33-year-old Mitesh Gala, a CIT Bank analyst seeking to renew his work authorization, should not be able to "skip ahead of others in line."

The agency dismissed Gala's claim that he faces the immediate loss of $8,500 in monthly income as "relatively minimal," arguing that amount does not meet the standards for judicial intervention.

"There can be no showing of delay sufficient to merit judicial relief — and certainly no showing sufficient to merit the extraordinary interim relief Gala seeks," USCIS said.

Gala's permit was set to expire Monday, after USCIS' calendar for booking biometrics appointments — where officials may take either an applicant's picture or their fingerprint and signature as part of the visa renewal process — became backlogged from springtime office closures due to COVID-19.

USCIS argued that a six-factor test governing the reasonableness of agency delays, articulated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, weighs substantially in its favor. Gala's application has been pending since June, and that is "less time than courts have found to be reasonable in similar contexts," the agency argued.

Gala, who holds an H-4 visa reserved for spouses of H-1B holders, had told the court earlier that the D.C. circuit's "rule of reason" factors suggest that as long as USCIS requires visa-holders to apply no earlier than six months before work authorizations are set to run out, then the agency must adjudicate applications within six months.

USCIS said that forcing its hand, however, would "reorder" the agency's line-based system for adjudication. The agency can only move through the line so quickly because of "competing priorities and limited resources," it said.

"Gala baldly asserts that the [work] project on which he is currently working is so important that not only will granting his motion 'not harm the public interest, it will specifically be in the public interest,'" the agency writes. "That is likely cold comfort to the thousands of individuals who would be moved further down in the current processing queue to accommodate Gala's request."

The agency further sought to cast doubt on the claims of economic harm Gala had argued would result from the expiration of his work authorization. USCIS said that his employer, CIT Bank, could "merely place him in a brief period of administrative leave," and argued that his family could cover monthly expenses by drawing on their savings.

Gala had expressed worries about drawing from savings, saying his family's income will take a hit in January when his wife plans to go on maternity leave. His wife, an H-1B visa-holder, submitted her status-renewal application the same time that he applied to renew his visa. His wife's authorization was approved in August, according to Gala's complaint.

With the impending birth of their new child, this ordeal has placed Gala's family in a "tenuous situation during a pandemic," he told the court.

USCIS did not provide Law360 with an on-the-record comment. An attorney for Gala did not return requests for comment.

Gala is represented by Mika B. Kozar of the Law Office of Thomas V. Allen PLLC.

USCIS is represented by Brian Field of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.

The case is Gala v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services et al., case number 1:20-cv-03042, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

--Editing by Adam LoBelia.

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