Immigration Attorney
Services & Fees

USCIS Receipt Backlog Update

11/25/07

We have noticed that USCIS seems to be prioritizing the issuance of I-797 Filing receipts.

I-130 Petitions we have filed for K-3 Visa petitions are not being receipted. It appears that USCIS is moving staff to other petitions at the expense of these I-130 petitions. In addition, I-129F petition processing for K-1 Visas are being delayed at the expense of other petitions. We hope USCIS rectifies this problem and resumes timely processing. This issue has been brought to the attention of the USCIS Ombudsman.

The application backlog is so large that Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, is months behind schedule in returning receipts for checks written to cover fees - an early step in the process.

``Were we caught off guard by the volume? Let's just say it was anticipated it would increase. It was not anticipated it would increase by that much,'' said Emilio Gonzalez, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The immigration agency would not say how many applications it has received. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, a private legal advocacy group, said it was told by agency officials that 3.5 million applications had come in over a two-month period. The agency projected a workload of 3.2 million applications for fiscal years 2008 and 2009.

Gonzalez ordered his staff to give priority to naturalizations, but some applicants will miss voting in primaries, which begin in January.

``I really want to target the elections,'' Gonzalez said. ``I really want to get as many people out there to vote as possible.''

The onslaught of applications has led to some files being sent back with errors or mistakenly rejected, while others seem lost in the system, applicants and attorneys say. Service centers in Nebraska and Texas have the longest delays. The Texas Service Center is working on applications dating from July 26, according to the agency's latest Web posting.