GAO Report on USCIS Fees

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has produced another set of two excellent and very revealing reports – one reviewing the Immigration and Naturalization Fees and one suggesting improvements for the setting of USCIS fees.

The two reports are very revealing in describing USCIS’s budgetary items, its heavy reliance on filing fees to finance operations and some inefficiencies created by the fact that USCIS is self-funding to a large extent.  The reports also criticize the July 2007 fee increase which resulted in an enormous spike in applications and, according to the GAO, surprised USCIS.  One of my favorite examples was:

USCIS’s lack of timely, comprehensive fee reviews prior to 2007 led to the need for an average fee increase of 86 percent. This contributed to a surge in application volume as applicants attempted to submit their applications before the fee increase took effect, resulting in costly operational challenges. For example, the number of applications submitted increased an unprecedented 100 percent in July 2007 over the prior month, exceeding storage capacity. At the Texas Service Center unprocessed applications were stored outside in six rented 10-by-40-foot containers, double-locked, and monitored by a full-time security guard.

Yes, according to the GAO, at least some of the applications filed at the Texas Service Center were stored outside, in a 10-by-40 container (like this one), exposed to weather and other elements.