Skip to main content

USCIS Knows What Its Problems Are. Will It Now Fix Them?


Recently, the USCIS conducted a survey of more than 5,000 “stakeholders” (folks who care about and participate in the U.S. immigration system in some way). These stakeholders were asked to identify the key areas of concern for them. The USCIS has now released its initial report from this survey, identifying the areas of concern most frequently raised by stakeholders. The report is enlightening.

This initial report lists the following areas of concern, in order, that USCIS will address:

  • National Customer Service Center
  • Nonimmigrant H-1B (specialty occupations)
  • Naturalization
  • Employment-Based Adjustment of Status
  • Family-Based Adjustment of Status
  • Employment-Based Immigrants Preference Categories 1, 2 (priority workers, professionals and holders of advanced degrees) and 3 (skilled workers and professionals)
  • Refugee and Asylum Adjustment of Status
  • Form I-601 (Application for Waiver of Ground of Inadmissibility)
  • General Humanitarian Programs
  • Employment Authorization and Travel Documents

The USCIS has committed to:

convene working groups to review each of the issue areas. Leaders from across USCIS will join analysts, adjudicators and customer service representatives in examining policy and instructional documents that guide our work. USCIS will follow the federal rulemaking process whenever appropriate, and once approved, new policies will be available electronically.

While it is all well and good to internally review and examine policies and procedures, isn’t that the source of the problems with these listed areas of concern? After all the biggest problem identified by stakeholders is the Customer Service it offers!! I challenge the USCIS to involve stakeholders in these working groups so that not only are real concerns voiced, but solutions can be discussed in an open forum, generating more and better ideas than have been coming out of USCIS since its formation. Making stakeholders and customers wait to comment on “”possible” internally generated changes until “potential” federal regulations are published (comments which are frequently ignored by USCIS in the rulemaking process) is more of the same old way of doing business.

Director Mayorkas should follow the promise President Obama made shortly after he entered office to make the internal decision making process more open and transparent. Enough of internal working groups. Let’s really fix these problems. Together.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

If You Are An Immigrant (even a US Citizen), Here Are 9 Things You Should Know

Are you a Naturalized U.S. Citizen, Lawful Permanent Resident, Visa Holder, or an Undocumented Immigrant? We recommend you take the following steps to protect yourself in our current version of America. The last couple of weeks have reminded immigrants, even naturalized U.S. citizens, that they were not born in the United States. Our office has received countless phone calls, emails, and social media messages from people worrying about what their family’s future in the United States holds. Most people want to know what they can do now to protect themselves from what promises to be a wave of anti-immigration activity by the federal government. Trump's Executive Order on Interior Enforcement has some provisions that should make most Americans shiver.  We recommend the following actions for each of the following groups: Naturalized U.S. citizens. In particular if you have a foreign accent, and you are traveling within 100 miles of any US Border (including the oceans

Seven Reasons Why the Georgia Legislature Should Repeal HB-87

Recently the Alabama Attorney General called on the Alabama State Legislature to repeal parts of Alabama's horrid anti-immigration law ( HB 56), because of the "unintended" consequences of the bill (frankly, what happened was not unintended). Because of the similarity between the two laws, Georgia's Speaker of the House, David Ralston was asked whether Georgia Legislature would repeal part or all of HB 87, Georgia own anti-immigration law. HB 87 has caused almost a half a billion dollars in damage to the Georgia economy (along with untold suffering in Georgia's immigrant communities) without any noted or reported positive effect. Speaker Ralston plainly stated that the Georgia Legislature would NOT do anything to repeal HB 87 . While it understandable why a politician would not admit that a pet bill he shepherded and pushed through the state legislature was simply bad law, it is also clear that Speaker Ralston is facing a challenge on his RIGHT in th

How To Stop Illegal Immigration

In the midst of the never ending political season, we hear much rhetoric about immigration, and what candidates will "do" to fix what everyone considers to be a broken (not failed, just broken) immigration system.  Most of the candidates, however, put a condition on fixing this broken system by saying that:  "FIRST, we must secure the border and end illegal immigration, then we will talk."   What will it take to accomplish this precondition to solve a the acknowledged problem. There are two types of "illegal" immigration to the United States.  The first is what everyone already considers to be illegal immigration--those who enter the United States without a visa through our thousands of miles of borders.  Proposals to fix this particular type of illegal immigration range from alligators and moats, to automatic firing machine guns, to “beautiful” walls, to limitless numbers of border patrol agents.  The second type of "illegal" immigratio