Think Immigration: What Do Tech Savvy Immigration Agencies Owe the Tech Unsavvy

As part of our efforts to amplify the AILA Law Journal, Author Allison Huang describes how she was inspired to dig into the use of technology in immigration agencies and courts for her article in the Spring 2025 issue of the AILA Law Journal. AILA members, access your free digital copy of the Law Journal to read more!

My search for ways to contact U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) inspired this paper. Some of my clients had applied for the U visa, a non-immigrant visa so severely backlogged that clients wait an average of 6 years before they hear a decision from USCIS. When I came onto the project my clients had been waiting five years already. Naturally, they were anxious to know what was going on behind the curtain.

USCIS promised that “MyUSCIS” online account users received “personalized, real-time information related to their individual case 24 hours a day through any internet-connected device.” My office had been using paper and snail mail. When I asked one of my clients whether he had an email address with which to make an online account, he replied in his native language that the “light” was not reliable—referring to the Internet. Therein lay the issue my paper wished to explore: while my technologically-deprived clients had heard silence for years, in theory technologically-savvy individuals heard updates in days. Was there anything that ought to concern us about this disparity?

On the surface, the disparity seemed inherent to the medium. Paper was slow and the Internet was fast. The point of introducing the online account was to capitalize on these differences—something I acknowledge in my paper. What made me suspect that something more was afoot was that in my brief stint building technology solutions for Fortune 500 companies—my pre-law school career—I had learned that a large-scale migration of users onto a new interface had to be accompanied by attention to the transition. In particular, the company had to plan for those stakeholders who would struggle with the transition. In private companies, this was to prevent paying users from churning, but in the public context, it seemed a matter of importance regardless of the bottom line.

The paper argues that immigration agencies need to plan change with their “technologically-unsavvy” stakeholders in mind, and that failure to do so violates those stakeholders’ due process. It explores two examples: the USCIS contact channels that inspired the paper, and the use of videoconferencing technology in immigration courts. I imagine that at the very least, an individual client stymied by new technology could make a due process argument along the lines of my paper, and more ambitiously lawyers could launch a collective action suit in response to a poorly managed technology upgrade impacting millions of users. In the paper, I also introduce tools used in the private context to manage change. When a judge asks, “I see that there’s a due process concern here, but what would you do about it?”, showing that tools like change management exist will make the client more likely to win a suit and will help us hold institutions accountable.

I would like to thank the AILA Law Journal editors for seeing the potential in this paper and Editor Margaret (Peggy) Taylor for helping me edit my paper and flesh out its ideas.