Immigrants, employers frustrated by delays in federal system

FARGO, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) — Delays in the federal immigration system are creating frustration for North Dakota residents seeking legal immigration and employers who have come to depend on immigrants.

Adam Broers, a human resources executive for Bethany Retirement Living in Fargo, said he has a list of 25 nurses ready to come to work for the senior care provider, but those hires are in the Philippines, waiting for government approval to come to the U.S. to work.

Some of those potential workers have been on the list since 2023.

“It certainly feels like wait times are getting longer,” Broers said.

But there are also delays for immigrants already in the United States.

A woman who recently moved to Fargo from the Philippines has a job lined up to work as a nurse for Bethany. But she hasn’t started the job because her work authorization hasn’t yet been approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

She is living with her husband, a Fargo native, while they wait for a hearing to be rescheduled, but they have no idea how long the wait will be.

The North Dakota Monitor is not naming the couple out of concerns for her safety.

The Minneapolis field office for Citizenship and Immigration Services is where North Dakota residents are likely to go for an immigration hearing or interview.

The couple traveled to Minneapolis in November for a hearing, spending the night in a hotel so they could arrive early for their 8 a.m. appointment. At 8:30 a.m., they were told the hearing would have to be rescheduled. They say they were not given a reason.

They drove the three-and-a-half hours back to Fargo, no closer to the goal they have been working on for more than three years.

Since then, “complete radio silence,” her husband said in an interview.

The woman arrived in the U.S. in August, and the couple got married.

She is spending her first North Dakota winter awaiting approval for either her green card, showing she is a permanent resident of the U.S., or her Employment Authorization Document.

She called her immigration delays “disappointing and frustrating.”

Such delays have become more common, immigration advocates say.

Michael Southam of the FM Volunteers for Ukraine, speaks Dec. 5, 2025, at the Sons of Norway in Fargo, North Dakota, on the challenges facing legal immigrants. (Photo by Jeff Beach/North Dakota Monitor)

Michael Southam, organizer of the FM Volunteers for Ukraine, said in a panel discussion in Fargo in December that federal government delays are putting legal immigrants in danger.

“Our government is not handling the documentation and processing to keep people safe,” he said.

He said his group has helped about 200 of the 1,000 Ukrainian refugees that have come to North Dakota because of Ukraine’s war with Russia.

Jennifer Stohl Powell, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, said even naturalization ceremonies for new U.S. citizens are being delayed.

“They’ve been through the whole process to become a U.S. citizen, but their ceremonies were canceled,” she said. “They’re waiting to be rescheduled.”

A naturalization ceremony scheduled in December in Fargo was delayed because of weather and not rescheduled. There are two naturalization ceremonies scheduled in Fargo March 17.

As for the Fargo couple’s wait, Powell called it “par for the course.”

She said the Minneapolis office has closed abruptly at times, sometimes interrupting people in the middle of an interview.

She suspects that some of those abrupt closings have been because of protests outside the building by people against the large presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the Twin Cities.

ICE announced Thursday it would draw down the number of agents in the Twin Cities as part of Operation Metro Surge. Federal agents killed two U.S. citizens as they sought to make arrests of people in the U.S. illegally.

Powell said one of the reasons for longer wait times is a Department of Homeland Security policy change. In October, the department announced it would stop automatically extending employment authorizations for some categories of noncitizens.

“They’re revetting those applications, which is going to cause delays for everything else,” Powell said.

In announcing the policy change, Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow called the change “a commonsense measure.”

Immigrants “must remember that working in the United States is a privilege, not a right,” Edlow said in a news release.

Southam said some of the Ukrainian refugees in North Dakota are highly educated, including doctors, but have not been able to work even though there is a shortage of medical professionals, he said.

Nursing is among those high-demand areas, something that adds to the frustration of the Fargo couple.

Bethany Retirement Living resident Valentine “Val” Schlosser speaks with Matilda Wilson, a certified nursing assistant, at the south Fargo facility. Wilson is originally from Liberia, one of several Bethany employees from West Africa. (Photo by Jeff Beach/North Dakota Monitor)

Broers said Bethany has 100 to 120 nursing positions with multiple slots to fill.

“If I could get 20 nurses, we’d be doing really really well,” he said.

Broers said about 300 of Bethany’s 800 employees are foreign born, many from West African countries such as Liberia.

He said Bethany, like many North Dakota businesses, uses recruiting services to find potential employees in the Philippines and elsewhere.

He said he would be happy with seven or eight nurses from the Philippines in a year, but for now is stuck waiting on immigration approvals.

For immigrants already in the United States, Powell said they need to exercise caution, such as making a copy of documents showing that they have a pending application with Citizenship and Immigration Services to keep at home while carrying the original when they leave their residence.

Powell said people with appointments with the agency should know they can be detained at the immigration office.

“Things are really complex right now, and it’s a good idea to talk to an immigration attorney,” she said. “Make sure you understand your eligibility and know if there are any risks, because the stakes are so much higher now.”

North Dakota Monitor Deputy Editor Jeff Beach can be reached at jbeach@northdakotamonitor.com.