Why have the Service centers slowed?

[ScottThuy 140]

I got a kick out of this article.

http://www.ilw.com/articles/2009,0629-paparelli.shtm

Bloggings on Dysfunctional Government

by Angelo A. Paparelli

Editor's note: Here are the latest entries from Angelo Paparelli's blog.

June 26, 2009

Immigration Gaming - USCIS Style

The first rule of gambling is that the odds always favor the house. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), the unit within Homeland Security tasked with conferring or refusing requests for immigration benefits, has started its own casino of sorts. And the house, not surprisingly, is winning.

As business and family petitioners have come to hear from their shell-shocked immigration lawyers, USCIS regional service centers (RSCs) have been spewing forth Requests for Evidence (RFEs), Notices of Intent to Deny (NOIDs) and Denial Notices faster than a baseball-pitching machine at a funhouse. Have companies and families all of a sudden become less qualified en masse for immigration benefits than in prior years? The odds are that the answer is no. Rather, the rules of play have changed, but the house's management has not officially announced them.

In short, boilerplate bad-news correspondence, especially in the employment-based visa categories of the H-1B, O-1 and L-1, set forth new rules, typically without citation to authority, under which what once was clearly approvable is now suspect, disbelieved and deniable or denied. The USCIS adjudicators issue their edicts in ipse dixit fashion, ignoring statutes, legislative history, regulations and decades-old headquarters policy guidance.

Seasoned observers are puzzled at the reasons prompting this sea change in applying the rules of play. Some suspect that agency personnel, so reliant on user fees for day-to-day operations, may act (even if only subconsciously) in the knowledge that denials lead to more fee revenues from motions to reopen and administrative appeals. The cynics point to the recent USCIS reinstatement of its Premium Processing Service for most employment-based immigrant visas, at $1,000 extra a pop, and predict the result to be faster denials and more motion and appeal revenues.

Others doubt that fee-churning is the root cause. Instead, they point to the foregone conclusion, stoked by a flawed internal report, that fraud and technical violations are rampant. The meme that fraud is everywhere has spooked adjudicators into suspecting every petitioner, no matter how reputable and worthy, by demanding more and more documentary evidence which is scanned for the smallest inconsistency. The perceived inconsistency then allows the adjudicator to claim that all of the submitted evidence may also be doubted.

But surely cooler heads will prevail, you say. Undoubtedly, you assume, the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) will overturn unjustified or unjust decisions.

It's difficult to be confident that the AAO, another USCIS unit, will reverse decisions of their compatriots. The AAO publishes no rules of procedure, or statistics on the rate that adjudicator decisions are overturned, and does not require that the "jurists" in this administrative tribunal be admitted to the bar or adhere to a code of judicial conduct.

Moreover, foreign nationals who've been denied immigration benefits in most cases have no legal standing to appeal or be heard, but instead must rely on a sponsoring employer or family member who, as the "petitioner," has the right to appeal. If the petitioner takes the case to the AAO, USCIS house rules make the stakes for the foreign citizen very high. If they wait in the U.S. to see whether the AAO overturns the adjudicator's decision, the wait comes with harsh consequences. During the waiting period, they have no right to work, and worse yet, if the AAO rubber-stamps the RSC adjudicator's decision, the penalty for losing is a determination that the foreign citizen -- merely for waiting in the hope that justice will be served -- is in a condition of "unlawful presence" and (once they leave the U.S.) is barred from returning for anywhere from three to ten years. The House of USCIS will not apply the unlawful-presence bar, however, if the AAO reverses the adjudicator's denial of immigration benefits. This may tempt some foolhardy foreign citizens to try and wait out an appeal, however remote the chance of success, in the hope that Lady Liberty and Lady Luck are with them.

The stakes of justice and the rule of law ought not be so high as to require a ten-year ante.

Posted at 06:29 AM

Edited June 26, 2009 by ScottThuy

[ScottThuy 140]

Then Obama said he was changing the whole system..

http://www.ndtv.com/news/diaspora/us_immig...be_revamped.php

The Obama administration has announced that it is going to use cutting-edge technologies to revamp the entire US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), so that paperwork and backlog are reduced and to bring in more transparency into the system.

US President Barack Obama told a select bi-partisan group of Congressmen that such a system would be in place in the next 90 days, in which the USCIS will launch a vastly improved website.

This is likely to help thousands of Indian-Americans every year who apply for permanent residency or Green Card, or approach USCIS for various immigration issues, but have to experience an agonising wait.

Such a website, he said will, for the first time ever, allows applicants to get updates on their status of their applications via e-mail and text message and online, Obama said in his remarks before a group of Congressmen whom he had invited to discuss immigration system.

"Anybody who's dealt with families who are trying to deal with -- navigate the immigration system, this is going to save them huge amounts of time standing in line, waiting around, making phone calls, being put on hold," Obama said.

It is an example of some things that we can do administratively even as we are working through difficult issues surrounding comprehensive immigration, he said.

Acknowledging that a comprehensive immigration reform might take time because of the issues involved, Obama said his administration has taken several interim measures.

"The FBI has cleared much of the backlog of immigration background checks that was really holding up the legal immigration process. DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is already in the process of cracking down on unscrupulous employers, and, in collaboration with the Department of Labor, working to protect those workers from exploitation," he said.

The department has also been making good progress in speeding up the processing of citizenship petitions, which has been far too slow for far too long, he said.

Referring the nearly 12 million undocumented workers in the US, who are not paying taxes and are living in the shadows, Obama said this group have to deal with in a practical, common-sense way.

"I think the American people are ready for us to do so. But it's going to require some heavy lifting, it's going to require a victory of practicality and common sense and good policymaking over short-term politics. That's what I'm committed to doing as President," Obama said.