Aytes Testimony In Front of Congress

The House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugess, Border Security and International Law held a hearing yesterday, April 30, 2008, on the topic of “Wasted Visas, Growing Backlogs.”

Michael Yates, the USCIS Associate Director for Domestic Operations testified in front of the Committee and although scheduling conflict did not permit our firm to be present at the hearing, we have reviewed the text of Yates’ prepared statement.

Unfortunately for us and our clients, Yates’ prepared statement does not seem to provide much forward-looking insight into the operations of USCIS.  The statement goes to great lengths to explain the visa categories, the processes for obtaining legal permanent residency and the historic numbers, but does little to show the millions of foreigners with backlogged pending applications how and when will the backlog be cleared and the process streamlined.

For completion, we are including the prepared statement of Stephen A. Edson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Visa Servivce, U.S. Department of State.  Mr. Edson’s statement explains how the State Department allocates visa numbers and praises the State Department’s work in allocating the visa numbers so that close to 100% of the available visas in each Fiscal Year are used.