VisaJourney.com News

Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence (I-751) to be filed with the California or Vermont Service Centers

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will soon be revising the filing instructions for the Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence (Form I-751) to require filing at the California or Vermont Service Centers, where all Forms I-751 are currently adjudicated. The adjudication functions for these petitions have already been assigned to these locations in anticipation of this change. Therefore, all petitioners filing a Form I-751 are requested to file the petition with the California or Vermont Service Centers, depending on the state in which they reside.

Form I-751 is used by individuals who were granted conditional residential status through marriage to a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident and who desire to petition USCIS to remove the conditions on their residence.

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We’re Listening: USCIS Acting Director Jonathan Scharfen writes to the DHS Leadership Journal

Saturday, May 17th, 2008

USCIS Acting Director Jonathan Scharfen writes,

Last month, former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Emilio Gonzalez discussed an editorial printed in the New York Times about USCIS’ recent application backlog–and it generated more interest from readers than any other Leadership Journal entry to date, both in terms of the numbers of readers and posted comments.

I am not surprised. We all appreciate that immigration benefits granted by USCIS, including citizenship, employment authorization, and permanent residency for immigrants and their families, are incredibly important to you–our customers and stakeholders–and our nation. We also know that our business processes are not always transparent or easily understood—they are admittedly complex. In this Journal entry, I’ll try to address some of your comments.

Many comments dealt with the surge in applications that took place after USCIS announced its new fees. After a long, in-depth review of our financial situation, we increased our fees last summer. We had to. USCIS is almost completely funded by fees, and the agency was not meeting its obligations or operating costs under the old fee structure.

To meet those obligations, we needed to invest in new facilities and technology and build our staff to improve the service our customers deserve, knowing it would take some time to accomplish. These things do. We needed to ensure funds were actually coming in the door before hiring thousands of new employees or making investments in technology.
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Italian’s Detention Illustrates Dangers Foreign Visitors Face

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was “a totally Virginia girl,” as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington’s home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper.

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Mr. Salerno’s case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States — problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.

Hundreds of thousands miss out on tax rebates because of foreign spouses

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO – When Maulit Shelat heard about the Bush administration’s plan to pump up the economy by sending out stimulus checks, he sat down with his wife and drew up a list of priorities: first up, remodeling the bathroom.

But Shelat is married to a foreigner who still hasn’t completed the often years-long process that allows her to apply for a Social Security number. Her not having that number makes even him ineligible for the tax rebate checks that started going out last week because they filed jointly.

He is among an estimated hundreds of thousands of taxpayers — from legal immigrants to soldiers based abroad — who won’t be getting a share of the stimulus package because of a provision aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from getting rebates.

More immigrants suing USCIS because of citizenship backlog

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

The number of immigrants suing the federal government to force a decision on their backlogged citizenship applications is increasing sharply, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

In fiscal 2005, applicants filed 370 such lawsuits against U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. By last year, the number had jumped to 3,900, and applications this year are on pace to surpass 5,200, the Post said.

The backlog was caused by an unprecedented number of applications last year — more than 1.4 million.

Lawmakers have blasted the agency for not preparing for the increase.

At a hearing last month, Sen. Edward Kennedy told Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff that 580,000 people who applied for citizenship in time to vote in November will be denied that chance because of the delays.

Chertoff said that USCIS will process a record 1 million naturalization applications by the end of the current fiscal year, 30 percent more than in 2007.

Read the Washington Post story here.

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USCIS Processing Trends Update

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

During the last year the USCIS has made many promises to improve the processing of key benefits filed at their offices. They have consolidated filing locations as well as streamlined internal procedures. Did it help? Below are a few observations that stand out from VisaJourney’s Immigration Timeline Tracking System.

For K3 Visa Holders one major issue has been the delay in receiving a first Notice of Action (NOA1). As you can see below the USCIS has indeed corrected the problem (example shows the California Service Center):

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USCIS Role in the Visa Process (Testimony to Congress)

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008

Chairwoman Lofgren, Ranking Member King, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the role of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in the visa process, particularly USCIS and Department of State (DOS) efforts to maximize visa issuance in accordance with the law. I am accompanied today by Don Neufeld, Acting Associate Director for Domestic Operations.

In recent years, over 1 million people became Lawful Permanent Residents of the United States (LPRs). Under the law there are a variety of different categories and means through which a person may become eligible for permanent residence. A substantial number of these categories have numerical limitations – annual caps on how many people can immigrate. There are other aspects to these caps as well, such as limitations per country.

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Archive for May, 2008

Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence (I-751) to be filed with the California or Vermont Service Centers

We’re Listening: USCIS Acting Director Jonathan Scharfen writes to the DHS Leadership Journal

Italian’s Detention Illustrates Dangers Foreign Visitors Face

Hundreds of thousands miss out on tax rebates because of foreign spouses

More immigrants suing USCIS because of citizenship backlog

USCIS Processing Trends Update

USCIS Role in the Visa Process (Testimony to Congress)

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