Steven Pham's Legal Blog

Over a year ago on July 30, 2007, USCIS dramatically increased filing and application fees, promising to hire new adjudicating officers and eliminating backlogs on case loads.  One year later and we find ourselves worse than we have ever been in the number of backlogs.  Whether or not the USCIS hired more employees, the evidence is clear.  Irrespective of how much funding the agency (USCIS) receives from the federal government or collected from applicants and petitioners (which are USCIS’s constituents), the agency has no clue as to how they can efficiently and effectively adjudicate these applications. 

In 2005 and 2006, a person who is filing an application to change his/her status from one nonimmigrant visa to another, or extend his or her visa status, would be able to receive a decision, whether that is a denial or approve, within 90 to 120 days.  Thus, a B-1/B-2 visitor who filed an application to change or extend his or her status 90 days before the expiration of the I-94 would be able to get a decision either before or soon after the expiration of the I-94.  While the application is no guarantee and the person may receive a denial after the expiration of the I-94, putting the foreign national “out of status,” his or her immigration status will not be adversely affected, so long as the person leave the U.S. within 180 days from the expiration of the I-94.  Essentially, although a denial after the expiration of the I-94 would make the person “out of status” and would have to leave the country, the person would not have been considered an “over-stay,” triggering a bar from coming back to the U.S.Currently, all service centers are at least 8 months behind in adjudicating change of status and extension of status applications.  In the Texas Service Center, who process applications for numerous states in the South and South-east of the U.S., these applications are 14 months behind.  Thus, anyone who files an application for change of status or extension may face removal and deportation, as well as a possible 3 through 10 years bar, if their application is denied.  Worst of all, these applications are ineffective and useless for B-1/B-2 visa holders because the extensions are usually only up to 180 days, making an approval useless because they would still be out of status by the time they received an approval from the USCIS.  As such, filing an extension for B-1 and B-2 visitors became the thing of the past. 

Sometimes, I wonder where all the additional application fees went?  What happened to new adjudicating officers that were supposed to be hired by the USCIS to clear the “backlogs?”  I wonder what would happen if one files a complaint to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) would make any difference or would that person get lost in the quagmire of government bureaucracy?  Perhaps AILA would like to take responsibility and bring up these issues and demand more accountability from USCIS?  Just a thought!