Thread: U.S. immigration agency speeding up procedures

http://today.reuters.com

U.S. immigration agency speeding up procedures
Fri Sep 15, 2006 8:17 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said on Friday it will meet its goal of reducing the average wait time for immigration services to six months by the end of September.

The agency formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service also said the total number of pending cases that exceeded the six-month wait period fell from 3.8 million in January 2004 to 1.1 million in July this year.

"It really is a Herculean achievement that we've been able to achieve this," Emilio Gonzalez, the agency's director told reporters.

Nearly 1 million applications will still be pending at the start of October, said Michael Ayetes, director of USCIS field operations.

But the agency considers these outside its control because they are awaiting feedback from other agencies such as the FBI, or information or documents from applicants, Ayetes said.

In July 2001, President George W. Bush asked the agency to establish a six-month standard from start to finish for processing immigration applications.

Three main types of services still face backlogs, Ayetes said. They include relative petitions, in which a U.S. citizen asks for the naturalization of a relative, requests for permanent residence and asylum applications.

The offices with the biggest numbers of backlogs are New York, Miami and Atlanta, he added.

Crystal Williams of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said USCIS holds some responsibility for the nearly 1 million applications it says are outside the agency's control.

"They have become faster and they've made progress ... but in many cases they are generating these numbers by sending unneeded requests for extra documentation (to applicants)," she said.

Williams added the agency should also establish procedures to get information from other agencies faster.

Hurry up....pile them in as fast as you can, with no regard to what the impact is going to be. Rush as fast as you can into the dark recesses of the Third World!