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: Masliah & Soloway

Heavy Traffic at the USCIS

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has informed the public that it received nearly 2.5 million applications and petitions this past July and August. This is more than double the number of applications and petitions received during those two months of 2006.

In our view, this large volume is due to several factors: the enormous hike in filing fees, the July Visa Bulletin debacle, and the lack of comprehensive immigration reform which encouraged immigrants to resolve their immigration situations wherever possible.

The USCIS has also informed us that in FY 2008 (September 1, 2007 to October 31, 2008) it received 1.4 million applications for naturalization, almost double the amount it had received in FY 2007. The agency has predicted that many of these applications, in particular those received after June 1, 2007, may take approximately 16-18 months to process despite its intention to hire approximately 1,500 new employees to work on these cases.

Given the predicted time frame for adjudicating naturalization applications, it appears very unlikely that these applicants will be eligible to vote in next November?s Presidential election. This result and its implications provide us with a lot of food for thoughts.

Full post as published by Masliah & Soloway on November 27, 2007 (boomark / email).