FMI – The Food Industry Association appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Removal of the Automatic Extension of Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) interim final rule (IFR) (USCIS-2025-0271). While FMI understands that visa processing backlogs need to be reduced, we are concerned that the bluntness of the EAD IFR’s immediate implementation coupled with other recent DHS visa actions will have negative implications on workforce capacity and operations in the food industry. FMI respectfully requests DHS reconsider the IFR and return to a previous 180-day policy of automatic EAD extensions.
Our industry strives every day to build long-term capacity and resilience in the nation’s food and consumer goods supply chain. A key to supply chain efficiency and the industry’s ability to provide safe, affordable, and accessible food and consumer goods is regulatory certainty and lessening government red tape on businesses. With less than 24 hours’ notice of this policy change that reduced a 540-day automatic extension to zero days, businesses and employees had no ability to plan.
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