Immigration Applications at All-Time High, May Take Years to Clear

The USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez appeared yesterday (01/17/2008) in front of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law and in written testimony he talked about the unprecedented volume of immigration applications filed with his agency.

As the chart illustrates, the number of visa applications following the July 2007 visa fees increased dramatically. This is ironic since the goal behind this July 2007 visa fee increase was to eliminate the processing backlog that plagued many visa applications. According to Gonzales, however, the USCIS did not anticipate the extremely high volume of applications, mainly resulting from the forward movement in many visa priority dates in the July 2007 Visa Bulletin. As a result of this forward movement in the employment-based visa numbers, the USCIS received in the summer months of 2007 approximately 300,000 adjustment of status applications, along with work authorization and travel (advance parole) documents, making a total of approximately 800,000 applications. From June through August 2007 the USCIS received over 3 million applications and petitions of all types (compared with 1.8 million for the same period in 2006).

In Fiscal Year 2007, the agency received almost 1.4 million citizenship applications which is almost twice the number received during the previous fiscal year. Gonzalez stated that his agency has responded to this surge in applications by increasing work hours, adding shifts and hiring contract workers to help meet the demand. However, the backlog remains and is not likely to decrease in the near future. The unfortunate news from Gonzalez is that, “