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As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing delays at USCIS associated with the processing of various Immigration petitions. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Immigration Impact, that is immigrationimpact.com the article is titled: USCIS 2022 Progress Report Shows Promise but Agency still Has a Long Way to Go. Quoting directly: "Last week US Citizenship and Immigration Services released its fiscal year 2022 report. The report highlighted data regarding the agency's approach to reducing backlogs, addressing labor shortages, meeting a growing humanitarian need and maneuvering fiscal challenges. Within the report, the agency continuously credits congressional support for backlog reduction and other positive changes to the processing of various Immigration applications. While USCIS receives income through its application fees - which continue to be increased - it has also received large increases in congressional funding, though this has had limited impact on the problems persisting in the agency." 

Yeah a really good point there. USCIS is technically a privately funded agency. It is supposed to be funded by the fees it takes in from its application fees which are substantial in many, many cases. Then on top of that when they have shortfalls they just go to Congress and say "hey we are not able to do what we are able to do based on the money we have made. Can you go ahead and make up the shortfalls by allocating us money" essentially. And they do that and then honestly in my opinion, services especially at USCIS have not gotten better in the past three or four years. In fact if anything they have gotten substantially worse than I ever remember them being in 15 years of doing US Immigration work. So yeah it does kind of beg the question where is all the money going? Quoting further: "According to the report, nearly 1 million immigrants became US citizens in 2022, which represented a 62% reduction in the net backlog of naturalization applications and the third highest number of naturalized citizens in US history." This is me talking. Yeah that is all good news, that is really good news. I am glad to hear they have cleared up a lot of the backlog in naturalization, it is always good to make new US citizens.

That being said, there is still a major backlog with respect to visas of folks who are waiting in line patiently who have gone through the process legally to try to get into the United States which brings me quoting further: "USCIS credits its accomplishment to the commitment of its workforce and appropriations from Congress. However, reduction in the net backlog is only a partial solution, as there continues to be extensive delays in the processing of new applications, along with remaining backlog, which continues to grow."

Yeah, you know at the end of the day when you have got a backlog it tends to kind of feed on itself. The backlog creates more backlog because more cases are coming all the time. So, I don't know exactly how to solve this. Perhaps a budget allocation specifically for employees to clear the backlog might not be a terrible idea. Again, Congress sends money over there. Even though it is supposedly a privately funded organization, Congress sends a ton of money over there, it is taxpayer's money. If it is going to go there, I would like to see it go toward actually moving the Immigration process along to a clip that is reasonable.