However, Congress has diverted a significant portion of these fees to other functions. In addition, under the INS fee structure, the agency s budget estimates for future years are based on previous years filings. In addition, filing fees do not cover the costs of updating and maintaining computer, filing and other infrastructure systems, nor do they cover necessary overtime for backlog reduction. While a good start, past experience indicates that it may take more than that to eliminate the backlogs. In addition, due to changes in the qualification requirements in many immigration categories, and the changing nature of employment, the complexity of these filings also has increased dramatically.
Filings thus take longer to evaluate properly, thereby adding to the backlogs.
In the last several years, INS policy decisions and failure to change outdated policies have exacerbated backlogs in adjudicating petitions and applications by requiring additional, unnecessary filings. For example, INS requires applicants for green cards to apply for separate travel permission, instead of allowing them to travel on their current, valid visas. INS also issues documents, such as travel permission and work authorization documents, with very limited validity periods, thus adding more filings to its workload. Persistent bugs, computer systems that do not meet the needs of the processing centers or are put into exclusive operation with minimal field testing, problems with automated scheduling software, coordination of systems between the various INS locations, and long delays in fixing these problems, all contribute to increased processing times and backlogs when any particular system crashes. In addition, many of the agency s computer systems are obsolete, and INS does not have funding to invest in new replacement systems.