USCIS Adjudicators Have Grown Less Efficient For 82% of Forms

David J. BierImmigrants and U.S. sponsorsare waiting longer than ever to receive responses to their applications to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the agency has released a  new proposed rule today that would dramatically increase fees for most applications to help process them quicker.But data in that rule reveal one important reason why processing times are increasing, and it has nothing to do with money: for 82 percent of form types, USCIS adjudicators are simply spending more time reviewing the form than in the past, leading to a  backup of applications sitting at the agency without anyone to look at them.As a  result of the longer review times, it will take USCIS more than 3.3 million additional man‐​hours to process its backlog.The processing time that applicants feel is how long it takes to find out the outcome of their request. As I  havepreviously documented, the average of the median processing times across all forms for which DHS-USCIS reports data increased threefold —from less than 4 months in 2012 to over a year in 2022. However, the 80th percentile at the most‐​delayed locations was more than double the average at 27 months, and 20 percent of applicants at those locations waited even longer.But another type of processing time is even more important: the time it takes for an adjudicator to review the application after they pick it up. This “review time” is how long it takes an adjudicator to issue a decision on an app...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs