03/31/2009: USCIS Releases Eye-View of Target Processing Times at 09/30/2009 and Curr

[tinuverma]

Saw this on immigration-law.com
quite interesting, we might expect something by sept 30th of this year.
good luck all.

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=97e19c337879d110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCR D&vgnextchannel=54519c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1 RCRD

[trueguy]

This report says Pending Employer Based I-485 is 234,043. What does it mean, is it total backlog in all EB category as of date ?

[dontcareaboutGC]

Could be- who knows....Perhaps the FOIA information whenever it is obtained if tallied with this may give us a better picture. Again this depends on what CIS interprets as PD or any other information per their "book of definitions" which I can almost gurantee is designed to save their behinds and realistically I doubt that they can gain such information with the mix and match of many variables.

DOS and Ombudsman have been trying for years to get the numbers from them including the new DHS secretary but no luck so far, atleast nothing which will indicate that these are close to the actual backlog numbers.

Previously some member had a letter from Jeff Flake's office regarding this. I dont remember the numbers from that letter but someone could pull that thread up and verify.

[gc_on_demand]

Could be- who knows....Perhaps the FOIA information whenever it is obtained if tallied with this may give us a better picture. Again this depends on what CIS interprets as PD or any other information per their "book of definitions" which I can almost gurantee is designed to save their behinds and realistically I doubt that they can gain such information with the mix and match of many variables.

DOS and Ombudsman have been trying for years to get the numbers from them including the new DHS secretary but no luck so far, atleast nothing which will indicate that these are close to the actual backlog numbers.

Previously some member had a letter from Jeff Flake's office regarding this. I dont remember the numbers from that letter but someone could pull that thread up and verify.


It was 51717 for Eb2 india and 70838 for Eb3 india. Total all Ebs for India is 125923. This is from PDF file some one poted on forum few weeks back regarding senator's reply to his / her query.

[dontcareaboutGC]

Assuming that 125 K that Jeff Flake obtained are correct then what USCIS projects the backlog to be 250 K by 2009. That would mean that we are distributing 125 K between E1-E5 for all other countries of chargeablity. Does this add up? I don't think so.

We also have to consider CP as compared to AOS. In this case if these numbers were true the DOS would start making the dates current for the overseas consular posts to catch up which is what it currently does anyhow since it doesnt have the right information from CIS anyways...so I have no reason to believe the farcial information that CIS publishes to alleviate any future forseeable pain they will have to endure as the pressure from other areas of congress and public in general start mounting up.

Besides these are the folks who have NO REGARD for law and make and interprete laws per their own terms

[gc_on_demand]

I checked USCIS's report for pending / incoming application for Dec 2008. and it shows some where 600k 485 pending including all Eb / Fb and refusee etc.. while in this current article total for all 485 comes 370888. Which means either they have adjucted 230k I 485s in 2 months. Which doesnot seems to be correct. They may have adjucted 485 for immidiate relative without using visa numbers but still 230k in 2 months seems very high.

[pointlesswait]

these numbers dont include the cases for which they are awaiting action from the individuals (thats what it says on the website)...so my guess they must have sent RFE's for the rest..;-)..

also .. i think they put out some numbers to get the monkey off their back....

I checked USCIS's report for pending / incoming application for Dec 2008. and it shows some where 600k 485 pending including all Eb / Fb and refusee etc.. while in this current article total for all 485 comes 370888. Which means either they have adjucted 230k I 485s in 2 months. Which doesnot seems to be correct. They may have adjucted 485 for immidiate relative without using visa numbers but still 230k in 2 months seems very high.

[validIV]

Unless there is a removal of the bottleneck in visa issuances, I dont see how USCIS meeting their goals will help those at the 485 stage. Without a visa, USCIS will not give you an approval faster. But they will certainly deny your case faster.

[dontcareaboutGC]

It is not so much as for the bottleneck. Even with the current system in place they are a really mismanaged and utterly chaotic system at best with status quo to be totally acceptable. Other than some occasional noise they make I do not see a significant push from anyone within to improve the system- Coz as I understand the messup happened during their moves of INS to USCIS with no future planning and system setup to justify and handle high surges of anysort whatsoever.

This information should be been the 1st things they needed to list atleast for anything. I also think they themselves do not know the actual numbers as there is high visa wastage over so many years. The questions really was if they knew these numbers who in their right minds would have denied they more resources to process this and minimize the wastage. They do not know the numbers hence they do not know the resources needed and hence the cycle repeats! I also think it is so twisted now that they cannot think of how to unravel it and streamline the process.

Even by any measure re-capture of visa numbers will give many people interim benefits but it will never solve the main problem- which is CIS itself.

[gcisadawg]

these numbers dont include the cases for which they are awaiting action from the individuals (thats what it says on the website)...so my guess they must have sent RFE's for the rest..;-)..

also .. i think they put out some numbers to get the monkey off their back....

From ther press release
"The Today's Backlog column reflects the additional cases which USCIS will need to complete - over and above our current production rates - before the end of September 2009 in order to meet our processing time goals for the end of this fiscal year."

For I-485, Today's backlog column is 234,043. This # is the one they need to complete before Sep 2009 in addition to their existing production rates.

Total goal for FY 2009 = 234,043 plus the number based on existing production rates.

This is just a piece of a puzzle and doesn't give any insight at all. These statistics are more for themselves than for the real customers like us....These are just to satisfy/justify that they are doing their job!


Thanks,
G

[crazyghoda]

They also dont include those numbers where no visa number is available. So 234,043
is their target towards completion.

Whats interesting is that they currently have 79,558 cases that they can currently approve and they plan to take on ( 234,043 - 79558) 154,485 more cases for approval by Sept 2009. What they do not specify is how many of these cases will be from EB versus FB. So in short, these numbers dont mean that there are going to be any major jumps in visa dates at all. In fact, its very likely that they may stall EB dates move those numbers to FB and move FB dates forward to reassure the Hispanic lobby that they are making headway on their issues since CIR aint gonna happen this year.

Sorry for the pessimism, but just being realistic.

these numbers dont include the cases for which they are awaiting action from the individuals (thats what it says on the website)...so my guess they must have sent RFE's for the rest..;-)..

also .. i think they put out some numbers to get the monkey off their back....

[bajrangbali]

~79K cases pre-adjudicated is a positive note we can take from this. Well, that may be across all EB categories 1-5 and all countries, but it will be interesting to know how many of those are pre-adjudicated eb2/3-I and eb2/3-C. If these backlogged categories have significant number of cases pre-adjudicated the bulletin movement would be more meaningful. It looks like uscis is moving in right direction and trying to clear older cases.

[svn]

OK, as gcisadawg mentioned, this is a piece of a puzzle but we now have multiple sources of information. So, let's try to put some of those together to arrive at Current Pending 485 Applications by category:

1st source of Information:
In the information just released by USCIS, they have given us us a "goal" they had set for themselves for year end i.e. Sep 30, 2009. However, as per their tracking, they are nowhere near achieving this goal since they have a HUGE backlog as of today. Using the information provided

Current Pending 485 Applications = Total Open 485 Applications Goal at end of Sep, 2009 (i.e. 301,695) + Total of Current Backlog based on current rate (i.e. 370,888)+ Applications that correspond to the "Normal" rate of processing between now and Sep 30 2009 (?)
= 672,583 + ?

2nd Source of Information:
At the end of Jan 2009, USCIS had released number of I-485 applications pending = 620,249

The two sources of information indicate that the number of pending I-485 applications has actually gone up by at least by 52,334. This seems strange given that most folks have not been able to file I-485s recently given unavailability of visa numbers. However, if you exclude the number of I-131 i,.e Advance Parole applications(56,328) that have been included as part of I-485 in 1st Source of Information, that leads us to the number of applications that USCIS has in fact processed between end Jan 2009 and today (drumrolls please) =

3994


So, if in about 7 weeks between end Jan 2009 and Mar 23, 2009 (date of release of Memo), USCIS has processed 3994 applications, we can anticipate that in the 27 weeks between now and end of Sep, 2009, USCIS, the number of applications it will process is:

15405

In other wods, given their current rate of processing and their current backlog, by the end of Sep 30, 2009, the number of pending applications will still be

= 672,583 - 56,328- 15,405
= 600,849

Hate to be gloomy but ....Hope, anyone?

[dontcareaboutGC]

Like I had mentioned- Since this is all speculation and NO ONE really knows (USCIS included) the total backlogs they have- The resource allocation suffers due to this lac of information which eventually leads to slow processing- which in turn leads to increase in backlogs- which adds to more backlogs since more people apply.

In short in the realistic scenario somewhere along the line they will have to start looking into making changes. Even though now India and China are retrogressed (ROW too) sooner or later other countries are going to start coming to a point where they are also going to have to face lines- not necessarily due to lac of availability of visa's for them but due to resource allocation- then what do they do?