Iranian Immigrants Battle Vetting They Say Undercuts AI Goals

A State Department policy snagging Iranian nationals, including specialists in artificial intelligence, is threatening to undermine President Joe Biden’s directive to facilitate hiring foreign talent to bolster US capabilities in emerging tech fields, would-be immigrants argue.

A group of Iranian employment-based green card hopefuls is suing the agency over a requirement that they submit a form seeking years of supplemental information on their relatives, employment, and social media history—after attending consular interviews that themselves take months to secure.

The additional scrutiny lands green card seekers from Iran in bureaucratic limbo with no clear end point, according to three separate lawsuits filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California.

The policy—a holdover from the Trump administration—acts as a pseudo travel ban on Iranian immigrants, said Curtis Morrison, an attorney with Red Eagle Law LC who represents the plaintiffs. But now there’s even less clarity, he said.

“When it was an actual ban, we knew the rules—they were in the foreign affairs manual,” Morrison said. “We don’t know the rules now.”

‘Picking Lottery Balls’

All of the plaintiffs—including nearly 90 applicants for employment-based visas as well as their spouses—had approved petitions from US Citizenship and Immigration Services and had traveled to US consulates outside Iran for required interviews.

The applicants joining the latest lawsuit, filed in late June, include a cardiology professor, a Ph.D. student in civil engineering, and an expert in machine learning. All were approved for a green card category that’s exempt from onerous labor market tests typically required, because USCIS deemed their admission to the US to be in the “national interest.”

By self-petitioning for these national interest waivers, the scientists can also secure visas without an employer sponsor.

Many of the plaintiffs have accumulated publications and awards both inside and outside of Iran. One, an expert in developing AI technology for purposes like medical imaging and fraud detection, has been published in journals including Nature.

But following interviews at US consulates—typically in Turkey, Armenia, or the United Arab Emirates for applicants traveling from Iran—the plaintiffs say they were required to submit additional information through a form known as the DS-5535. First introduced in 2017, the DS-5535 covers more than a decade of additional information on employment, travel, and residential histories.

That added requirement meant the plaintiffs were subject to administrative processing—a catch-all term for additional State Department screening that can last more than a year and a half for some applicants.

The duration of that additional screening varies based on each case—one plaintiff and her daughter received visas after submitting the form, but her husband remains in administrative processing for his derivative visa months later. And according to State Department officials, a current backlog of 61,000 cases is being handled by just 37 analysts.

“It’s like picking lottery balls,” Morrison said. “At some point there’s no processing going on here.”

Countries of Concern

The lawsuits argue the State Department process violates the Administrative Procedure Act because the mandate for Iranian applicants is arbitrary and capricious.

And only allowing applicants to submit the DS-5535 form after appearing at a consulate is unlawful because it means Iranians can’t provide all necessary evidence at their interview as the Immigration and Nationality Act requires, they say.

A State Department spokesperson said the agency couldn’t address the litigation, but said about the form that national security is the agency’s top priority when adjudicating visa applications.

“Every visa decision is a national security decision, and every prospective traveler to the United States undergoes extensive security screening,” the spokesperson said.

Immigrants from Iran in particular are likely to face additional scrutiny because their government is designated a state sponsor of terrorism, immigration observers say.

It’s also one of several countries—also including North Korea, Russia, and China—that have conducted espionage campaigns to steal intellectual property or other technology from US institutions, said Divyansh Kaushik, vice president at consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies.

The reality is that administrative processing is a complex process that can take significant resources, said Kaushik, who focuses on emerging tech and national security.

Biden’s AI executive order “is clear, yes, recruiting the world’s best and brightest is a national security priority, but that goes hand in hand with screening and vetting,” he said.

But US security and intelligence agencies likely already have an idea of who they should be concerned about without asking visa petitioners for a decade of additional information on their social media and work history, said Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless Immigration Inc., which helps applicants navigate the legal immigration system.

“There are many ways the country can protect itself from espionage and foreign adversaries, but categorically delaying the visa process for folks from different countries feels like throwing the baby out with the bath water,” he said.

Automated Process

The Biden administration in 2021 sought public comment on the information covered by the DS-5535 although actual revisions to the form weren’t issued.

Consular officers should be making a determination if the additional information is necessary in each case, said immigration attorney Roujin Mozaffarimehr, managing partner at ImmiCore Law.

Instead, an algorithm automatically flags immigrant petitioners to submit the form, said Mozaffarimehr, who has represented clients subject to the additional vetting.

Not all Iranians are tagged for administrative processing, and visa applicants of various nationalities can be subject to the extra scrutiny based on additional questions from an interview.

But most Iranians and virtually all men from the country are required to submit the extra documentation after their interviews, she said.

“We’re talking about the best and the brightest. Their work is so important to the national interest, they warrant a waiver of the labor certification process required for employment-based green cards,” Mozaffarimehr said. “It’s a huge loss for the US and our economy.”

Adjudicating immigrants’ cases that are pending extra scrutiny has taken on added urgency with the upcoming presidential elections in November, Morrison said.

Should Donald Trump win back the White House, he’s promised on day one to implement travel bans “even more restrictive than the ones during his first administration,” Morrison said. That’s caused panic among would-be Iranian immigrants and their relatives in the US.

A 2024 campaign platform approved by the Republican National Committee this month underlined that pledge.

“They realize there’s this window right now where they have a chance to come to the US and the Biden administration is fighting them on it,” Morrison said.

The cases are Sadeghi Mahonak v. Blinken, C.D. Cal., No. 8:24-cv-01443; Westways Staffing Servs. v. Blinken, C.D. Cal., No. 8:24-cv-00491; and Hosseinnezhad Ariani v. Blinken, C.D. Cal., No. 2:24-cv-04536.