EOIR-42B Form Changes: Signature at Filing, Part 7 Cuts

The Justice Department is rewriting the two cancellation of removal applications, moving the applicant’s sworn signature to the day of filing and dropping questions it says have no bearing on a judge’s decision.

The EOIR-42B form, the application long-term residents without green cards file to ask an immigration judge to cancel their deportation, is being revised along with its companion for green card holders, Form EOIR-42A. In a 30-day notice placed on public inspection Oct. 23 and scheduled for Federal Register publication Oct. 26, the Executive Office for Immigration Review said applicants will sign and affirm both forms when they file them, that it will remove Part 7 fields it calls “irrelevant to the immigration judge’s exercise of discretion,” and that Question 21 will be broadened to cover the different visas an applicant may have used to enter the country.

Cancellation is the main defense in immigration court for people with deep roots here. A green card holder can qualify after five years as a permanent resident and seven years of continuous residence, with no aggravated felony conviction. A person without status needs 10 years of continuous physical presence, good moral character, and proof that removal would cause “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, parent or child. Congress caps that second form of relief at 4,000 grants a year.

The timing matters because the courts hearing these cases are speeding up. EOIR keeps swearing in new classes of immigration judges, and recent Board of Immigration Appeals precedents, including one that ended the presumption of a continuance for U visa petitioners, leave less room to fix a weak record later. The application is increasingly the record.

A signature that counts from the day of filing

The change with the most day-to-day impact is in Part 9. EOIR says it will modify that section on both forms “to collect the applicant’s signature and affirmation at the time the form is filed.” The practical effect is that every answer becomes a signed, affirmed statement from the moment the application reaches the court. Errors about dates of entry, arrests or time abroad are likely to carry more weight, because a government attorney can treat a signed inconsistency as a credibility problem. The notice does not say whether applicants will also be sworn to the form again before the judge, or how corrections filed later will be handled.

The notice does not list the Part 7 fields being removed. Its wording, fields irrelevant to discretion “for each respective type of immigration relief,” suggests the two forms will be tailored more closely to their different legal tests: a discretionary weighing of equities for green card holders, and the hardship standard for everyone else. The revised drafts sit in the Office of Management and Budget docket for OMB control number 1125-0001 on reginfo.gov. EOIR also plans to update electronic filing fee information and to rewrite the instructions “to mirror as closely as possible the text of the INA.”

EOIR now expects fewer EOIR-42B filers

Comparing the new notice with EOIR’s last one on these forms, published Nov. 21, 2025, shows the agency’s own expectations shifting.

Estimate	Nov. 2025 notice	Oct. 2026 notice
EOIR-42A respondents per year	1,519	1,457
EOIR-42B respondents per year	15,757	13,787
EOIR-42A filing fee	$700	$710
EOIR-42B filing fee	$1,600	$1,649
Attorney cost per hour used in estimate	$70.08	$84.84

Source: EOIR Paperwork Reduction Act notices, FR Doc. 2025-20651 (Nov. 21, 2025) and FR Doc. 2026-21775 (public inspection Oct. 23, 2026). Both put completion time at 5 hours and 50 minutes per form.

EOIR now projects about 12.5 percent fewer EOIR-42B applicants a year and about 4 percent fewer EOIR-42A applicants, a calculation from the two notices. Neither notice explains how the counts were derived. Even the lower figure means non-permanent resident applicants outnumber the 4,000 annual grants Congress allows by more than three to one. Once the cap is reached in a fiscal year, federal regulations direct judges to reserve decisions on otherwise approvable cases until numbers open up, so a winning case can still wait for a grant.

Relief of any kind is rare. A Congressional Research Service review of EOIR data found 767,398 initial case decisions in fiscal 2025, with relief granted in about 5 percent, even as the overall backlog has been falling.

Comments run for 30 days after the Oct. 26 publication, which would close them around Nov. 25, and go to OMB through reginfo.gov. After OMB approves, EOIR will post new editions. The open question is the transition: the notice says nothing about a grace period for older editions or about applications already pending before a judge.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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