Special Student Relief (SSR)

Special Student Relief (SSR) is the temporary suspension of certain F-1 visa regulatory requirements by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for students whose "home country" or "region" is experiencing a designated "emergent circumstance." The current list of designated countries is available on the DHS website.

Interpretation of Special Student Relief (SSR) dates:

Publication Date: This is the date the Federal Register Notice (FRN) publishes in the Federal Register. Eligible F-1 students who qualify for relief may begin to apply for SSR on or after this date.
Eligibility Date: This date is stated in the second bullet under the “Who is covered by this notice?” for the particular country in the respective FRN. Students who were lawfully present in the United States in F-1 status on this date may qualify for SSR. In many of the recent FRNs, this is the publication date.
Effective Date: This is the date that eligible F-1 students may begin SSR. Students who are engaging in SSR under a preceding FRN may begin the new period of SSR on this date.
Expiration Date: This is the date that SSR ends, unless the FRN expires in the middle of the student’s academic term. If the FRN expires in the middle of the student’s academic term, the student’s SSR continues until the end of that term. A student may have to renew their employment authorization document (EAD) to cover the gap between the expiration of the current EAD and the end of their current term.
The U.S. government often extends or re-designates SSR for a country if the crisis continues. When they do this, a new FR notice is published, and this notice often sets a new, later eligibility date.
- If you qualified under the original notice, you are covered.
- If you entered the U.S. between the original date and the new extension date, you may only be covered if the extension notice includes your entry date. You must check the latest FR notice for your country on the DHS website.

Eligibility Criteria:

Valid F-1 Status.
Good Academic Standing.
You must have been lawfully present in the U.S. in F-1 status on the date the SSR notice was published in the Federal Register for your country.
You must be a citizen of the particular country/region (regardless of country of birth) listed in the Federal Register.
Experiencing severe economic hardship as a direct result of the emergent circumstances in your home country.
Only available to F-1 students who are citizens of a country specifically designated by a DHS Federal Register notice.

Important information:

SSR and Economic Hardship are two separate immigration benefits; however, you must be experiencing severe economic hardship as a direct result of emergent circumstances in your home country.
SSR employment doesn't need to be related to a student's major and doesn't affect their eligibility for on-campus employment or off-campus employment such as CPT, OPT, STEM OPT, and International Organization Work Authorization.
The work limit is suspended; students can work more than 20 hours per week while school is in session.
- On-Campus SSR only requires your ISO Advisor’s recommendation in SEVIS.
- Off-Campus SSR requires your ISO Advisor’s recommendation in SEVIS and requires approval from USCIS.
Dependents are not eligible for SSR benefits.
During an approved SSR period, students are also eligible to reduce their course load and yet still maintain their F-1 status.
- Although they are often established around similar conditions in a country, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Special Student Relief (SSR) are very different benefits. One of the most important distinctions is that TPS does not include any reduced course load component for F-1 students. Only SSR contains that component. And so, if an F-1 student wishes to maintain F-1 status while under TPS, the student must register for a full course of study, unless the student has also been approved for a standard RCL under the regular F-1 regulations, or for an SSR RCL under an unexpired SSR notice for his or her country.

SSR can be a complicated process so please contact isogwu [dot] edu (iso[at]gwu[dot]edu) if you have any questions regarding SSR.