USCIS should be privatized

[Gosia & Tito 199]

The process will not speed up if privatized, because as a rule corporations in the US attempt to achieve higher profits by lowering their universally largest expense, labor. The reason it takes 5 months from file to embassy is a 5 month pile of files on their desks waiting to be worked. What they need, in an ideal world, is more labor not less.

Well, it would only need some outsourcing/offshoring and things would move fast, or at least faster. What? Some would say we can't offshore such a critical service that deals with identities and national security. Well, today most of the payroll and medical processing is offshore, and guess what, privacy and national security laws do not apply outside the US.

Before I get flamed here, I need to say that I don't think privatization is the answer in this case, but pure governmental is neither

Also, keeping the profit motive from the award of a visa is a great thing. Can you imagine how much corruption would creep in if the company running it was paid on the number of Visas processed? Osama bin Laden would probably have gotten one. Just look at the privatization of prisons. In one case from the top of my head, the CEO of the prison company paid a judge to send him more prisoners, people who would otherwise have gotten fines suddenly started going to jail.

Today, we contract people to go fight our wars in the middle East. There are indications that a lot of corruption, or at least, 'funny business' is going on there. Some try to portray those funny business as isolated cases, but we don't really know what is the truth, do we? Should we talk Congress and the lobby system?? I think few would disagree that lobbying is just legalized corruption

The reason the US Visa process is above reproach is strict ethical guidelines and no profit motive. If you want it to move faster, lobby your Senator and Congressmen to increase the NVC, USCIS, FBI, etc. budgets. Until then, wait in line like everyone else.

The problems we are seeing here are just one of the reasons why immigration reform is discussed. And even when average time end-to-end for a K-1 or CR1 is about 8-12 months (yes, there are cases when is longer or shorter), we actually have it easy here. Other types of visas can easily take years ad many more than a decade. Yes, it is a privilege to live here, but where is the justice and fairness. Justice is supposed to be blind but also speedy and timely.

Other than some COs being ####### about their duties (nothing wrong with that, they are just doing their job in a zealous manner), I don't see many here pointing to unethical behaviour or corruption (even when there has been several exposes of corruption in immigration matters)

IMHO

Well

[LookyWhatIFound 38]

hey mann, you have made lots of good point above. but i dont agree with you on a couple. i do agree that more labor is needed to get the process going faster. but as you can see right now, that labor is not coming. if its privatized to about 6 companies, competing for customers money, will make companies hire more labor to increase productivity (or will do whatever it takes to reduce the processing time). i really dont see anything happening soon about processing times at the USCIS and i am not expecting anything new. and as you have said, i should wait in line like everyone else - that is exactly what i am doing. i am just discussing an idea with my fellow VJ members.

I don't think its a good idea. Imigration and Naturalization into the US is better left to the government. The US is not a factory and its not about getting immigrants into America as quickly as possible. There's a reason it got put under the Department Of Homeland Security and it will take a huge act of congress to change that. So good luck with that.

[jarta 24]

I don't think its a good idea. Imigration and Naturalization into the US is better left to the government. The US is not a factory and its not about getting immigrants into America as quickly as possible. There's a reason it got put under the Department Of Homeland Security and it will take a huge act of congress to change that. So good luck with that.

there will be checks and balances. and also it would not be about getting immigrants into America ad quickly as possible. it will be about providing good, quality and fast services to the good people of America who have piad good money for the service. also i think most of us seen to have some sort of blind faith in the government which is believing that the people in government are the smartest people in the world and knows how to take better care of us. they are just like you and i and not like God.

[antoneya 9]

I sorry, but I’m just going to come out and say it...

While you are entitled to your own opinion, this is the most stupidest idea I have ever heard.

You want to turn the visa process into a profit based business, which means by law the main motives/goal of the company is to make profits. So anybody with a wheel borrow full of money can get a visa for themselves, their mother, their cousins and their dog. Yeah I don't it's going work...

You can say there will be checks and balances but money/profits is a powerful motivator, we have checks and balances now but they fail all the time...Enron, the current economic mess we are in right now, did we all just forget what just happened already???

Leaving it in the hands of the government means they are not motivated by profits, which also mean they have no reason to be efficient and speedy, but I personally am willing to wait in line if it means that only the people who should be here gets to come here...

[jarta 24]

I sorry, but I’m just going to come out and say it...

While you are entitled to your own opinion, this is the most stupidest idea I have ever heard.

You want to turn the visa process into a profit based business, which means by law the main motives/goal of the company is to make profits. So anybody with a wheel borrow full of money can get a visa for themselves, their mother, their cousins and their dog. Yeah I don't it's going work...

You can say there will be checks and balances but money/profits is a powerful motivator, we have checks and balances now but they fail all the time...Enron, the current economic mess we are in right now, did we all just forget what just happened already???

Leaving it in the hands of the government means they are not motivated by profits, which also mean they have no reason to be efficient and speedy, but I personally am willing to wait in line if it means that only the people who should be here gets to come here...

as you said everyone is entitled to his\her opinion...so thanks Mr. Smart Person for yours.

[tom&tanya 48]

That's all we need, turning immigration over to the tender mercies of multi-national corporations. Just think, in a few months it will all be outsourced to India ... Sounds like a giant cluster "F" in the making.

[LookyWhatIFound 38]

there will be checks and balances. and also it would not be about getting immigrants into America ad quickly as possible. it will be about providing good, quality and fast services to the good people of America who have piad good money for the service. also i think most of us seen to have some sort of blind faith in the government which is believing that the people in government are the smartest people in the world and knows how to take better care of us. they are just like you and i and not like God.

They are exactly like you and I, remember that, but there is a difference they have a lot more restraints, then the same stupid people that run the private businesses. No I don't trust government but I trust individual freeferall people to do the right thing even less.

[rostov007 29]

hey mann, you have made lots of good point above. but i dont agree with you on a couple. i do agree that more labor is needed to get the process going faster. but as you can see right now, that labor is not coming. if its privatized to about 6 companies, competing for customers money, will make companies hire more labor to increase productivity (or will do whatever it takes to reduce the processing time). i really dont see anything happening soon about processing times at the USCIS and i am not expecting anything new. and as you have said, i should wait in line like everyone else - that is exactly what i am doing. i am just discussing an idea with my fellow VJ members.

Ok, and I wasn't saying "wait" as an attack, I'm saying without larger budgets to hire more people, the lines will stay the same length. When you go to the grocery store, which moves faster? 20 people being served by 5 cashiers, or 20 people being served by one cashier? Of course, logic says 5 cashiers can each take care of 4 customers each at a much faster rate.

But my larger point is, corporations don't think that way. Their single largest expense is labor, so to make higher profits they will try to do the job with less workers, not more. In addition, I don't think the US gov wants the process to move faster. I think it moves exactly how fast they want it to for 2 reasons. First, files in the system longer have a greater chance of catching fraud. Second, we've all read stories on this site about relationships that could not survive the visa process. It taxes a new relationship and gives it some adversity to work through. The chances of only solid relationships coming out the other side is increased. Some will end in divorce, that's true, but it knocks down the percentage of wasted work this way.

Would I have preferred a faster process? Sure, but I also now know we can survive any adversity thrown at us.

Cheers,

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

I don't know if it's true or not, but I read on the one forum that actually reviewing case between NOA1 and NOA2 takes really short time. Most time of waiting our cases just being in a long queue till somebody in USCIS will take envelope from shelf, clean dust and will open it to see if it's something wrong there or not. So I read that waiting for a 4-5 months doesn't mean that all the time case is processing. It does mean that for a few months our cases just getting to be covered with dust on shelves more and more without anybody working about it. I want to reinsure - I don't know it by myself, I got this info on forum. It's Victor from Russia writing.

This is correct. Most petitions are adjudicated in less than an hour. The rest of the time is spent waiting in a queue for the adjudicators to catch up to it.

USCIS will occasionally hire new adjudicators if the backlog is getting pretty long and there's a pretty good guarantee that the backlog is going to be permanent. Other than that, they don't hire any more people than they need in order to handle the petitions they receive with a reasonable backlog queue. Since we petitioners are paying the fees, it's a courtesy to us that we're not paying people to sit on their hands waiting for another petition to arrive. A backlog of five or six months is a bit on the long side, but a couple of years ago the backlog was only a couple of months. Since the economy of the US seems to be on a downward spiral right now I would expect demand to soften, and the backlog to ease up.

[NigeriaorBust 4,087]

From the number of people that are ending up under additional review by the time they get to the interview it implies that the process is already running too fast. If the process was running at an optional rate there would be little or no AP. All the checks would be complete by interview time. So if you increased the speed top side yo would pay for it on the back side by being held up in AP hell longer.

[keysjangle 145]

Once things become privatized they turn into profit generators, because there are now in the service of share-holders, owners, etc. Sure, it would be cool if they really sped things up to ease the demand, but would I want to pay for more money to cover the office supplies and monthly office pizza parties? No. Leave this all to the government. And like someone else said, could you imagine the miscommunication between consulates and private visa centres? Good god.

Edited September 5, 2011 by Gervl

[Ashlyn&Grevin 0]

I defiantly think that the reason the the USCIS hasn't been privatized and probably never will be is that things like this require close supervision of the Government for national security reasons. As mentioned earlier it would be expensive for have civilians get security clearances and cost even more to have people look after the private companies to make sure they are doing their job right and not allowing people to pay them off just to get in. And honestly have you ever tried to do anything else with the government like get a security clearance, or join the military? 5 months is nothing!!

[fil01 16]

These corporations aren't doing anything at the moment...maybe they could take over for the USCIS...here they are.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Ok, I'll side with the OP here. I imagine the process would be digitized in a way that a near majority of applications could be processed by software. Submissions could be emailed etc.

The government probably wants to do this but can't easily.

[bigdog 377]

One background check should suffice especially for K1, if cleared, married in 90 and have all documents it should be OK to go for AOS.