Employment Immigration Visa Delays Addressed by Yates
Mike Yates, acting Deputy Director of USCIS, addressed the emotional issue of the long delays in employment based green card processing in the Homeland Security Leadership Journal. He shared that in late 2007 and early 2008, employers filed 234,000 I-140 petitions and currently USCIS is dealing with 300,000 filed adjustment cases. He listed USCIS’s measures in dealing with the backlog: increased emphasis on I-140 processing with a target processing time of 4 months to be reached by late 2009; issuing work authorization for a two year periods; and work with the State Department to ensure every available visa number is being used by shifting unused family based visas to employment based as occurred in 2007.
One of the concerns that continue to be expressed is the lack of accurate information on how long a case will take to get approval. Issuing a 2-year EAD is certainly a step in the right direction. I am not as certain that the other two factors listed are, per say, proactive steps to improve the backlog. For example, making sure every available visa is being used and shifting numbers from the family based to the employment based visa is simply required by law. With regard to reduction in processing time of I-140, it does not address the increase in denials of I-140 petitions. What good does reduction in I-140 processing time do if we are dealing with a record increase in erroneous I-140 denials? What most of us would like to see, among other things, is increased training and manpower to process applications expeditiously and correctly, and increased transparency and information sharing on processing time.
