Analysis of recently published U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data reveals crisis-level delays in the agency’s processing of applications and petitions for immigration benefits under the Trump administration. Throughout the nation, these delays are harming families, vulnerable populations, and U.S. businesses that depend on timely adjudications. 

Congress intended USCIS to function as a service-oriented agency that efficiently processes immigration-related applications and petitions, enabling individuals to obtain work authorization, citizenship, humanitarian protection, and other vital benefits, and U.S. employers to fill critical workforce gaps. USCIS data for fiscal years (FY) 2014 through 2018 shows that the agency is failing this Congressional mandate by adjudicating cases at an unacceptably and increasingly slow pace: 

• The overall average case processing time surged by 46 percent over the past two fiscal years and 91 percent since FY 2014.
• USCIS processed 94 percent of its form types – from green cards for family members to visas for human trafficking victims to petitions for immigrant workers – more slowly in FY 2018 than in FY 2014.
• Case processing times increased substantially in FY 2018 even as case receipt volume appeared to markedly decrease.

Other agency data lays bare a USCIS “net backlog” exceeding 2.3 million delayed cases at the end of FY 2017. This total amounts to more than a 100 percent increase over the span of one year despite only a four percent rise in case receipts during that period. 

Ballooning USCIS processing times leave families – including families with U.S. citizen spouses and children – in financial distress, expose vulnerable protection seekers to danger, and threaten the viability of American companies. Yet rather than relieving the logjam, USCIS exacerbates it with policies that inhibit efficiency and prioritize immigration enforcement over the administration of legal immigration benefits. Such measures act as bricks in the Trump administration’s “invisible wall” curbing legal immigration in the United States. 

Processing delays carry extreme consequences for affected applicants and petitioners. Matters as vital as food security, physical safety, and business sustainability can hinge on the timeliness of agency adjudications.

The well-being of many immigrant families – including those with U.S. citizen spouses and children – depends on USCIS’s efficient adjudication of benefits requests. For instance, processing delays frequently jeopardize the ability of individuals to work, leaving families without a source of income for necessities such as food, housing, and transportation. At the end of FY 2018, USCIS took an average of 4.1 months to process Form I-765, Application for Work Authorization (excluding those I-765s associated with DACA cases) – 58 percent longer than in FY 2016 and nearly twice as long as in FY 2014. Even with “auto-extensions” of certain employment authorization documents, delays can result in job loss or the inability to work for extended periods of time, leaving families in financial distress.

Increased delays in the adjudication of employment-based benefits have also undermined the ability of U.S. companies to hire and retain essential workers and fill critical workforce gaps. Average processing times for (non-premium filed) Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker increased by 37 percent since FY 2017 and 169 percent since FY 2014 – from 2.9 months in FY 2014 to 7.8 months as of September 30, 2018. Lengthy processing delays in employment-based cases exacerbate labor shortfalls and alienate talented candidates from seeking employment opportunities in the United States, thus compromising the sustainability and global competitiveness of American businesses.

Contributors to USCIS Processing Delays 

Misguided policy changes under the Trump administration have worsened the adjudication slowdowns harming families, vulnerable individuals, and U.S. businesses. Historically, a variety of factors have contributed to USCIS case processing delays, including case receipt volume, personnel levels, and agency policies. The evidence indicates that current policies are playing a key role in USCIS’s dramatically increased processing times. In its April 2018 report to Congress, DHS acknowledged recent policy shifts as factors influencing its diminished per hour case completion rate.

Some of these “invisible wall” policies obstruct efficient adjudications, fueling today’s case backlog. For example:

• In 2017, USCIS rescinded longstanding guidance that directed USCIS personnel to give deference to prior determinations when adjudicating nonimmigrant employment-based extension petitions involving the same position and the same employer. This shift wastes resources and promotes inconsistent decision-making by compelling adjudicators to needlessly reexamine matters already satisfactorily assessed.
• The Trump administration has overhauled refugee case adjudications, bringing the processing of many of these applications to a virtual standstill.
• In 2017, USCIS implemented a sweeping new in-person interview requirement for employment-based green card applications and Forms I-730, Refugee/Asylee Relative Petition, without providing meaningful justification.

These shifts, announced and/or implemented in 2017 and early 2018, occurred amid DHS’s broader institution, at President Trump’s direction, of “extreme vetting” security protocols. However, the administration failed to furnish persuasive evidence that existing screening measures were inadequate.

All these changes set the stage for USCIS’s ongoing transformation from the service-oriented benefits agency that Congress intended into a third immigration enforcement component of DHS. This mission shift was further solidified in February 2018, when USCIS eliminated the phrase “nation of immigrants” from its mission statement and ceased referring to applicants and petitioners as “customers.” Since then, several other policy changes and practices have been implemented that highlight the agency’s growing prioritization of immigration enforcement over fair and efficient adjudications. These include:

• A new “Notice to Appear” policy that threatens to place into deportation proceedings a dramatically higher number of individuals whose applications and petitions are denied.
• A new measure subjecting foreign students and exchange visitors who inadvertently commit even de minimis status violations to deportation proceedings.
• “Deportation traps” where ICE has arrested spouses of U.S. citizens who appear at a USCIS office for an interview in connection with their Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative, which if approved would form the basis for lawful permanent residence.

While USCIS continues to advance policies that divert resources from adjudication to enforcement and slow case processing, it is also decreasing transparency and rolling back services long offered to applicants and their attorneys for inquiring into the status of their cases and the reasons for delays, including:

• The phase-out of self-scheduled “InfoPass” appointments, which allowed applicants and attorneys to self-schedule in-person meetings with USCIS personnel to discuss processing delays and other case problems. The agency announced that by the end of 2020 it will terminate this self-scheduling option altogether and require individuals to request appointments, which will be provided only in very limited circumstances, through the Customer Contact Center.

Although USCIS offers a “Case Status Online” service, which allows applicants and petitioners to check the status of their cases by typing their case receipt number into an online portal, the information returned is often out of date or inaccurate. Therefore, with new restrictions on InfoPass and the elimination of direct communication with USCIS service centers, the public not only faces extraordinary processing delays, it is also left with limited means for obtaining information and status updates on their cases. USCIS has offered no satisfactory explanation for why it is rolling back these communication channels.