News Update - January 19, 2008

By Alan Lee, Esq.

USCIS Director Gonzales Testifies to Long Delays as the Reward for Fee Increases and Improvement Years Away

USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez testified before Congress on January 17, 2008 about application processing delays, their causes and what the Service plans to do about them. Gonzalez stated that there was a surge of applicants in anticipation of recent fee increases in a magnitude far greater than has occurred when previous fee changes occurred. In the summer of 2007 over 3 million applications and petitions were received. He attributes increased filings to a surge of naturalization applications and employment-based visa filings following the July visa bulletin fiasco. There were 300,000 adjustment of status applications and that number added with applications for work authorization and travel documents ballooned to 800,000. The 3 million applications received over the summer dwarf the 1.8 million received the previous summer.

The result of this “surge” according to Gonzalez, was a delay for green card applicants and receipting of naturalization applications. I-130 petitions for relatives, a prerequisite to family-based green card applications, are also backlogged in a lockbox and USCIS is 3 months behind in receipting those petitions.

Security checks have also delayed adjudication of naturalization applications. The Director promised advancement in technology and automation including improving the background check process, but did not state how the USCIS would or could do it. In addition, the USCIS is hiring additional workers, re-hiring retirees and annual workers and having workers work overtime to catch-up with the backlog.

Director Gonzalez told Congress that the surge of applications will impact processing times for the next couple of years. Processing times for naturalization cases have increased from 7 months to 18 months. Family-based green card applications have increased from a stated average of 6 months to 12 months.

Preparation for the surge included advising the public and posting a list of “frequently asked questions” as well as expanding work hours and adding 84 staff members to Service Centers.

 


The author is a 26+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004.

This article © 2008 Alan Lee, Esq.

 

Copyright © 2003-2012 Alan Lee, Esq.
The information provided here is of a general nature and may not apply to any particular set of facts or circumstances. It should not be construed as legal advice and does not constitute an engagement of the Law Office of Alan Lee or establish an attorney-client relationship.