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USCIS Modifies Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has revised Form I-693, Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record. The revision was necessitated by changes to the Tuberculosis (TB) Component of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Technical Instructions for Civil Surgeons.

This revised form (edition date 04/02/08) must be used for any medical examination completed on or after May 1, 2008. Previous editions of the Form I-693 may not be used on or after that date.

The medical examination Form I-693 provides USCIS results of a medical examination for applicants filing for adjustment of status to become permanent residents. The examination is required to ensure that an applicant is not inadmissible to the United States on public health grounds.

The new form lists seven TB classifications at the bottom of its first page. Civil surgeons must record the results of all medical examinations conducted on or after May 1, 2008, on the new form.

Additionally, the current vaccination supplement will not be accepted for any vaccination assessment completed on or after May 1, 2008. An updated vaccination supplement has been included in part 2 of the revised form.

The revised TB Component of the Technical Instructions is available for review in the “Related Links” section of this page. For more information on the revised Form I-693, call the National Customer Service Center at (800) 375-5283.

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USCIS Modifies Application for Employment Authorization

Friday, April 25th, 2008

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has revised Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization. The form now includes additional eligibility codes.

These changes have been made in accordance with the Department of Homeland Security’s recent interim final rule regarding Optional Practical Training (OPT), published on April 8, 2008 in the Federal Register. The rule modifies the conditions and duration of OPT for qualified F-1 non-immigrant students.

USCIS will accept the July 30, 2007 edition of the form through July 8, 2008. As of July 9, 2008, USCIS will only accept the revised Form I-765, dated April 8, 2008, and will reject all requests using previous editions of the form.

The main purpose of Form I-765 is to allow certain aliens in the United States to request employment authorization and an Employment Authorization Document (EAD).

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USCIS Releases Projected Naturalization Processing Times

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Washington—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released today the projected times for local offices to complete processing of applications for citizenship from individuals who filed during the summer of 2007.

Last July, USCIS received 460,000 applications for naturalization. That was three times the record for any previous month. For the year, USCIS received 1.4 million naturalization applications, almost double the normal annual volume.

USCIS is hiring and training hundreds of additional immigration officers to adjudicate these cases. The agency is also conducting naturalization interviews on weekends, after normal business hours and in additional locations.

The processing times listed below provide a sense of how quickly a case may be processed if there are no complicating factors. Still, some cases will take longer to complete for such reasons as:

an applicant has been asked to submit additional information and their case is pending until they comply, or

an applicant fails the naturalization test and has 60 days to prepare before they are retested, or

the FBI name check is still in progress.

see the full list of processing times after the jump…
(more…)

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USCIS Issues Guidance For Approved Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Self-Petitioners

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently provided guidance to USCIS adjudicators for adjudicating Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) applications filed by Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) self-petitioners who are present in the United States without having been inspected and admitted or paroled. The guidance memo was issued on April 11, 2008.
(more…)

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USCIS Updates Projected Naturalization Case Processing Time

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

WASHINGTON – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it will finish more than one million naturalization cases during fiscal year 2008 – far exceeding the number of cases completed last year. This update comes following a thorough analysis of the work completed during the last six months.

“By the end of the year, I expect USCIS will have finished 36 percent more naturalization cases than last year without compromising national security or the integrity of the naturalization process,” said USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez.

The agency recently updated the expected time it will take to complete naturalization cases, projecting processing times averaging 13-15 months. That’s a three month improvement from the 16-18 month projection that USCIS made six months ago.

A critical component of the strategy for addressing this workload is to quickly grow the capacity to handle the influx of additional cases. That includes expanding the USCIS workforce by adding nearly 3,000 new employees, detailing employees to work in the most heavily affected offices, quadrupling the funding for overtime and using Asylum Office facilities and staff to conduct naturalization interviews.

Last summer, USCIS received an unprecedented number of applications and petitions for immigration benefits. During June, July and August alone, USCIS received nearly three million filings, compared to 1.8 million filings during the same period the previous year. This sudden surge included 1.4 million naturalization applications last year – 460,000 in July alone. While historically filing increases have occurred in advance of fee increases, Presidential elections, immigration debates and new legislation, none of the past increases are close to the magnitude of the last summer’s surge.

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USCIS and FBI Release Joint Plan to Eliminate FBI Name Check Backlogs

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

WASHINGTON – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today announced a joint plan to eliminate the backlog of name checks pending with the FBI.

USCIS and the FBI established a series of milestones prioritizing work based on the age of the pending name check. The FBI has already eliminated all name check cases pending more than four years.

“This plan of action is the product of a strong partnership between USCIS and the FBI to eliminate the backlogs and to strengthen national security,” said USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez.

By increasing staff, expanding resources, and applying new business processes, the goal is to complete 98 percent of all name checks within 30 days. USCIS and the FBI intend to resolve the remaining two percent, which represent the most difficult name checks and require additional time to complete, within 90 days or less. The goal is to achieve and sustain these processing times by June 2009.

The joint plan will focus on resolving the oldest pending FBI name checks first. USCIS has also requested that the FBI prioritize resolution of approximately 29,800 pending name checks from naturalization applicants submitted to the FBI before May 2006 where the naturalization applicant was already interviewed.

The target milestones for processing name checks are:

Completion Goal & Category

May 2008:
Process all name checks pending more than three years
July 2008:
Process all name checks pending more than two years
November 2008:
Process all name checks pending more than one year
February 2009:
Process all name checks pending more than 180 days
June 2009:
Process 98 percent of all name checks within 30 days and process the remaining two percent within 90 days

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Archive for April, 2008

USCIS Modifies Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record

USCIS Modifies Application for Employment Authorization

USCIS Releases Projected Naturalization Processing Times

USCIS Issues Guidance For Approved Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Self-Petitioners

USCIS Updates Projected Naturalization Case Processing Time

USCIS and FBI Release Joint Plan to Eliminate FBI Name Check Backlogs

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