USCIS Proposes Service Improvements

[Bert]

It appears that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is attempting to make the filing and review process more uniform. If only they would propose changes at the consulate level ....

 

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/cisomb_..._42_5-15-09.pdf

[Sebastian]

Here's Hoping the Director will listen to the Ombudsman (this time).

 

Seems to be good news, but I smell a new IT system for tracking...

[Henry and Mei]

Thanks. That was a good read.......

 

And I agree that the real effort and concern should be addressed at the Consulate/Embassay level, where most decisions really happen that adversely affect us, the customer.

 

Until they finally allow petitioners the opportunity at the time of the applicants interview a chance to provide any supporting evidence to address a refusal of visa, they are still missing the boat for TRUE customer service that they mention so often.

 

To my understanding, GUZ claims lack of space and time.........

 

First, was not space the reason they moved into the current building. I thought they applauded themselves on a bigger facility...

 

Time.....I guess a few minutes of their time is not available compared to days, weeks and sometimes months of the customer.....

 

My real guess is that they do not wish to possibly deal with a confrontation or defend their decision in person in full transparency at GUZ.........

 

I would like to think that someday we will see REAL progress in this arena.........CUSTOMER SERVICE........for all those that have come before us and those of us to follow.........

[BrokenHeart]

We all should live that long to see anything happen. They first need to clean out espically in GUZ all the dead wood, which is everybody there.

Get some fresh blood to interupt the law the code as it suppose to be. The petitioner will never know why the denial, "not a bonafide relationship" what a canned response, what a syetem. For instance in HK, i said to the woman interviewer "the code states to get interviewed where we got married" she says to me, I better read the code again it doesn't say that. Well if that glass wasn't 9" thick, you know the rest of that. Then and there i knew what was happening.

Go south young man to Mexico, and walk accross and stay forever.

[Guest shutterbug]

While the recommendations are all good, don't get your hope up though. Two years ago the Ombudsman's office was highly critical on how the name-check program had been used in processing N400 applications. Nothing came out of it and not long afterward the Ombudsman himself quit the job to return to private practice.

[Guest shutterbug]

Here's Hoping the Director will listen to the Ombudsman (this time).

 

Seems to be good news, but I smell a new IT system for tracking...

 

Great idea! With a new tracking system, maybe USCIS will stop telling people their N400 applications for naturalization are "received and pending", a year after they have become US citizens.

[Zhou Zhou]

This all sounds good and something I would expect to happen with this new presidential administration.

 

Brokenheart, wrote what many I'm sure have thought about...sure is much easier to cross from the south or from the north than to go through the legal process...What do y'all think?

 

[Bert]

While the recommendations are all good, don't get your hope up though. Two years ago the Ombudsman's office was highly critical on how the name-check program had been used in processing N400 applications. Nothing came out of it and not long afterward the Ombudsman himself quit the job to return to private practice.

 

It does seem like they made progress with the name checks:

 

http://www.visajourney.com/news/2009/03/10...check-backlogs/

[Sebastian]

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Edited May 16, 2009 by Sebastian (see edit history)

[Guest shutterbug]

While the recommendations are all good, don't get your hope up though. Two years ago the Ombudsman's office was highly critical on how the name-check program had been used in processing N400 applications. Nothing came out of it and not long afterward the Ombudsman himself quit the job to return to private practice.

 

It does seem like they made progress with the name checks:

 

http://www.visajourney.com/news/2009/03/10...check-backlogs/

 

That's very good news - 2008 being an election year, and the media attention may have finally created enough pressure to make it happen. In the summer of 2007 the Washington Post ran stories that showed how absurd and ineffective the program had become, USCIS did not respond, but the FBI wasn't happy about being blamed unfairly and went on the record to say USCIS paid FBI a mere $2 for each name-check request (out of the $400 collected from the applicant, prior to the fee hike). New York Times did something similar in 2008 as the election season heated up. While USCIS never responded to the Ombudsman's request to demonstrate how many applications were denied solely because of negative information returned by name-check, the FBI told the Washington Post that less than 1% of name-check requests ever returned any negative information. I suspect most if not all of these would have been flagged by the other more automated checks USCIS also used, just as the Ombudsman had suspected; not to mention that a higher percentage of the general population are actually in jail

 

This won't help anything at the DO level, but at least makes the processing at the four service centers a bit more predictable, which is progress.