Immigration Application Fees: Costing Methodology Improvements Would Provide More Reliable Basis for Setting Fees
Released: 2009-01-23T00:00:00

Letter

Background

USCIS is responsible for establishing immigration services policies and priorities and for the administration of immigration and naturalization adjudication functions. Its approximately 16,000 federal and contractor employees work in 250 offices worldwide, including field offices, application support centers, service centers, asylum offices, national customer service call centers, and forms centers. About 6 million applications and petitions for immigration and naturalization benefits, along with applicable fee payments, are submitted to USCIS annually. USCIS adjudicators process applications and petitions in four general categories:family-based petitions—for close relatives to immigrate, gain permanent residence, or work in the United States; employment-based petitions—for current and prospective employees to immigrate to or stay in the United States temporarily; asylum and refugee applications—for those seeking asylum or refugee naturalization applications—for those who wish to become United States citizens.

USCIS is authorized to collect fees for providing adjudication and naturalization services at a level that will (1) ensure recovery of the full costs of providing all such services, including the costs of similar services provided without charge to asylum applicants, and (2) recover any additional costs associated with the administration of the fees collected. In 1968, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), USCIS’s predecessor agency, began charging fees for immigration and naturalization services, depositing the fee collections into the General Fund of the Treasury as miscellaneous receipts. In 1988, Congress established the IEFA. Since 1989, application fees have been deposited in the IEFA, which is currently USCIS’s primary source of funding. Once deposited in the IEFA, the fees remain available to USCIS until expended. In fiscal year 1991, Congress directed that the IEFA also be used to fund the cost of asylum and refugee services and adjudication services provided to some immigrants at no charge, and thus, the charges for fee-paying applicants were increased to recover these costs.

In December 2000, Congress authorized the establishment of a premium processing program for employment-based applications. INS proposed the establishment of a premium processing service to provide businesses with a high level of customer service and improved processing because it could not otherwise meet the demand for expeditious service to the business community without an adverse impact on other applications. According to the INS Commissioner, an optional additional fee of $1,000 for business customers would also make capital available for infrastructure improvements. In response, Congress authorized the premium processing service; set the fee at $1,000, which is to be paid in addition to the regular application fee; and specified that it be used to provide accelerated processing services to business customers and to make infrastructure improvements in the adjudications and customer service processes. The premium processing service is to provide processing of certain employment-based petitions and applications within 15 calendar days of receipt of the request for premium processing service form. Premium processing fees also are deposited in the IEFA to be available until expended.

Currently, funding for USCIS comes from three fee accounts, direct appropriations, and reimbursements from other federal agencies. Table 1 shows the five funding sources and the amounts estimated for fiscal year 2008.

In past years, USCIS received larger amounts of direct appropriations to pay for administrative costs and for specific projects, such as the initiative to reduce its backlog of pending applications and its business transformation program to make long-term improvements in its business processes and technology. USCIS also received direct appropriations for two other specific programs—SAVE in fiscal year 2007 and E-Verify in fiscal years 2007 and 2008.

The three fee accounts provide almost 96 percent of USCIS’s total fiscal year 2008 budgetary resources. The fee review that is the subject of this report covers the application fees deposited in the IEFA, which is budgeted to provide approximately 94 percent of USCIS’s funding for fiscal year 2008. If the number of applications and fee payments received in a year is more than projected, USCIS can increase its spending authority to cover the increased workload, and thus get additional funds from the IEFA through reprogramming after it has notified Congress.

Persons seeking immigration and naturalization benefits submit their applications and associated fees to one of four service centers, local offices within one of four regions, or one of two lockbox facilities, depending on the application type and geographic location of the applicant. Some applications can be filed electronically with payment by credit or debit card or electronic transfer of funds. In addition, some applications require biometric services—collecting information such as fingerprints, photographs, and signatures for background checks conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—for which a separate fee is charged.

The four service centers (located in California, Nebraska, Texas, and Vermont), the National Benefits Center (located in Missouri), and many local offices receive, process, and adjudicate applications and petitions for immigration benefits. Contract employees generally are responsible for preadjudication processing steps, such as mail room operations, fee collection, data collection, and file operations. USCIS employees adjudicate the applications, that is, they make determinations about whether to approve the benefits for which an applicant has applied.

Lockbox facilities located in Chicago and Los Angeles receive certain application types and the related fee payments. Banks that operate the lockbox facilities are designated by Treasury’s Financial Management Service (FMS) as financial agents of the United States. They perform services for USCIS under a memorandum of understanding between the lockbox facility, FMS, and USCIS. Lockbox facilities are responsible for mail room operations, data entry, fee collection, setting up files, and sending the files to a service center or the National Benefits Center for adjudication. In 2007, in consultation with USCIS, FMS designated the bank that operates the Chicago lockbox as the financial agent responsible for all USCIS fee collections. USCIS is in the process of moving fee collection and other preadjudication processing activities from the service centers and field offices to lockbox facilities operated by that bank by March 2011.

Table 2 shows the amount and percentage of regular application fees and premium processing fees collected by site during fiscal year 2007. During fiscal year 2008, USCIS collected over $2.4 billion in regular application fees and premium processing fees for the IEFA.

The fiscal year 2007 fee collections reflect an increase in application fees that occurred at the end of July 2007 and an increase in the number of application filings prior to the fee increase date by persons wanting to avoid higher fees. Application filings also increased because of the publication of a State Department Visa Bulletin announcing the availability of employment-based visas. Fees increased by a weighted average of 86 percent per application, based on the fee review completed by USCIS in February 2007. (See app. II for a list of applications and their related fees.)

USCIS’s prior fee review was completed in November 1996 and resulted in fee increases that took effect in 1998. Since then, USCIS has increased fees four times (including the July 2007 increase). Table 3 shows the amount and basis for those fee increases.

To perform its most recent fee review, USCIS used a commercial off-the- shelf software application to assign the costs of its immigration application processing and adjudication services. Management’s objective was to set fees that would recover funds sufficient to cover USCIS’s costs. USCIS officials told us that when developing the methodology used in the fee review, management anticipated some skepticism about the fairness of the resulting fees, so its objectives also included using methods that would distribute costs among the various application types fairly and in a way that could be readily understood by fee payers and others.

The data USCIS used for its fee review came from a variety of sources. Financial data USCIS used were from USCIS’s fiscal year 2007 budget adjusted for inflation and USCIS estimates of the cost of enhancements needed to meet its responsibilities. The nonfinancial information USCIS used included historical data on application completion rates—the average time it takes to complete adjudication of an application—from its own Performance Analysis System (PAS) and the number of applications USCIS estimated it would receive each year in fiscal years 2008 and 2009.

USCIS estimated that the number of applications to be received in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 would be 5.577 million per year, including applications for which no fee is charged. Fee-paying application volume was estimated to be 4.742 million yearly. USCIS also estimated that 2.196 million of the fee-paying applications would require biometric services, for which an additional fee is charged.

USCIS also estimated the total annual cost of processing and adjudicating immigration applications for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. USCIS started with the fiscal year 2007 IEFA budget adjusted for costs that will not recur after fiscal year 2007, adjusted for inflation for fiscal years 2008 and 2009, and added the estimated cost of additional requirements USCIS determined it needed to enhance service, security, and infrastructure. USCIS’s resulting estimated cost for processing and adjudicating immigration benefit applications for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 is $2.329 billion, as shown in table 4.

The additional requirements of $524.3 million, shown in table 4, represent staff, equipment, training, and other costs that were not previously funded and that USCIS determined it needed to improve its capabilities to meet its mission responsibilities. These additional requirements include service enhancements ($134.8 million), such as staff and training, which according to USCIS, would provide a small surge production capacity to give it the flexibility to adapt to temporary increases in filings and the ability to incrementally work to marginally shorten processing times and improve service delivery over time; security and integrity enhancements ($152 million), such as establishing a second card production facility to support day-to-day production and to comply with federal standards for contingency planning to ensure that critical systems remain available in the event of catastrophic failure; humanitarian program enhancements ($14 million) to fully fund the Cuban Haitian Entrant Program; and infrastructure enhancements ($223.4 million), such as strengthening administrative support activities and upgrading and maintaining the information technology environment to sustain current operations.

As discussed in the next section (see also fig. 1), USCIS classified its total estimated costs as either direct or overhead. According to USCIS, direct costs were assigned to field offices or activities based on an identified relationship between the cost component and the field office or activity. Overhead costs were allocated to field offices primarily based on the number of FTEs assigned to each field office. The field office costs along with their allocated overhead costs were assigned to eight application processing activities and distributed as shown in table 5.

The activity costs include USCIS-estimated costs for asylum and refugee services ($191 million), fee waivers and exemptions ($150 million), and biometric services ($174 million). These costs were allocated to the applications separately as described below. USCIS assigned the remaining $1.814 billion of activity costs to the expected 4.742 million fee-paying applications, resulting in a processing cost for each application type. USCIS then allocated the costs of asylum and refugee services and fee waiver and exemptions in equal dollar amounts as surcharges to each application’s processing cost to arrive at a total cost for each application type. USCIS set each application fee based on this total cost. The $174 million of “capture biometrics” activity costs were allocated evenly to the estimated 2.196 million fee-paying applications, resulting in a separate and equal biometrics fee for each application that would require biometric services. (See app. II for a list of applications and fees.) Figure 1 illustrates the cost assignment process.

Costing Methodology Did Not Consistently Adhere to Federal Accounting Standards and Principles and Other Guidance

Although the July 2007 fee increases met management’s objective to set fees at a level to recover USCIS’s estimated costs of immigration application processing and adjudication services, the costing methodology USCIS used to develop the fees for each application type did not consistently adhere to federal accounting standards and principles and other guidance. While federal accounting standards allow flexibility for agencies to develop managerial cost accounting practices that are suited to their specific needs and operating environments, they also provide certain specific guidance based on sound cost accounting concepts. USCIS officials told us that when developing the methodology, management anticipated some skepticism about the fairness of the resulting fees, so its objectives also included using methods that would distribute costs among the various application types fairly and in a way that could be readily understood by fee payers and others.

USCIS’s methodology was not consistent with federal accounting standards and principles and other guidance in the following aspects: (1) unreimbursed costs paid by other federal entities on behalf of USCIS were not included in USCIS’s estimates of total costs, (2) key assumptions and methods used for allocation of costs to activities and types of applications were not sufficiently justified, (3) assumptions about staff time spent on various activities were not supported by documented rationale or analysis, (4) the cost of premium processing services was not determined, and (5) documentation of the processes and procedures was not sufficient to ensure consistent and accurate implementation of the methodology. Because of these inconsistencies, USCIS cannot support the reasonableness of the cost assignments to the various application types.

Certain Costs Paid by Other Federal Entities Were Not Included in the Fee Review

USCIS did not include the costs of lockbox services paid by Treasury or certain retirement benefits to be paid by OPM in estimating the full cost of its immigration application processing and adjudication services. USCIS officials told us that they only included costs that the agency paid directly, which met management’s objective to set fees that recover funds sufficient to cover USCIS’s costs. However according to federal accounting standards, each entity’s full cost also should incorporate the cost of goods and services that it receives from other entities free of charge. This is especially important for executive agencies when the costs constitute inputs to government goods or services provided to nonfederal entities for a fee or user charge because executive agencies should recover the full costs. OMB Circular No. A-25, which provides guidance for executive agencies on assessment of user charges, states that when not in conflict with the fee-authorizing statutes, and unless the agency has been granted an exception to the general policy, fees should be sufficient to recover the full cost of providing a service, which includes all costs to any part of the federal government, including accrued retirement costs not covered by employee contributions and the costs of collection. In other words, costs should be included regardless of which agency pays them. Congress authorized, but did not require, USCIS to recover full costs. The document USCIS prepared to describe its methodology stated that it adhered to the principles in OMB Circular No. A-25, but in the final rule for the fee adjustment, USCIS also made clear that its fees would recover only the costs of USCIS’ operations. Although not inconsistent with the legislation authorizing the fees, the scope of the costs to be recovered by USCIS, as announced in USCIS’s final rule, is inconsistent with the general guidance in OMB Circular No. A-25. USCIS did not document in its final rule, which it indicated OMB had reviewed, or elsewhere the rationale for excluding non-USCIS costs from its fee review, including whether or how it considered the executive branch policy in OMB Circular No. A-25 on recovering full costs and other factors.

At the time of the fee review, USCIS had not estimated the cost of lockbox services provided by Treasury’s FMS. At our request, FMS provided information showing that it compensated two lockbox providers $20 million for services provided to USCIS in fiscal year 2007. USCIS included $2 million of these lockbox costs in the estimate of its costs of immigration application processing and adjudication services. According to a USCIS official, these costs were related to changes the lockbox facility had to make to its systems controls, for example, to accommodate additional data elements required by USCIS in application forms. Although the $18 million lockbox costs excluded is not a material amount in relation to the current $2.329 billion total costs estimated by USCIS, this lockbox cost is expected to grow significantly in the future as USCIS executes its plan to move the preadjudication processing activities, including fee collection, from service centers and field offices to lockbox facilities by March 2011. In fiscal year 2007, approximately 23 percent of fee collections were at the lockbox facilities, while almost 68 percent were at service centers.

Legislative authority exists for FMS payment for lockbox services. FMS pays lockbox costs pursuant to its responsibility for collecting revenues coming into the federal government and for providing specialized receipt and disbursement services for federal agencies. FMS officials told us that federal agencies do not pay for receipting, custody, and disbursement of federal funds by FMS on the agencies’ behalf because these services are FMS’s responsibility. According to FMS officials, agencies are to reimburse FMS only for the costs of services that are considered unique to that particular agency. USCIS and FMS signed an interagency agreement in September 2008 that establishes reimbursement levels for onetime and annual costs that USCIS will pay to FMS. These costs represent the portion of FMS’s lockbox costs that are unique to USCIS.

In addition, USCIS did not include in its estimated costs of immigration application processing and adjudication services some of the costs of retirement benefits—pensions and health and life insurance—to be paid by OPM on behalf of USCIS. Based on its fiscal year 2007 costs, USCIS estimated that the average annual projected cost for these benefits for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 is $47 million before taking into consideration the agency’s 14 percent increase in the number of employees from May 2007 to May 2008 and 16 percent increase in related payroll costs.

Together, the estimated more than $65 million of FMS and OPM costs excluded each year represents approximately $14 per fee-paying application for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. This estimate could differ among application types if these costs were analyzed more precisely.

Without consideration of these costs paid by other federal entities, USCIS is not accounting for the full costs to the federal government of USCIS’s immigration application processing and adjudication services, and USCIS’s cost data used for setting fees are incomplete.

USCIS Did Not Sufficiently Justify the Use of Less Precise Cost Assignment Methods

The methodology USCIS used to determine the cost and develop the fees for each application type involved various assumptions and cost assignment methods. In large part, it consisted of allocating costs on a prorated basis. USCIS did not prepare and document analyses to justify its assumptions that prorated allocations provided a reasonable distribution of those costs. While federal accounting standards do not prohibit allocating costs on a prorated basis, they list an order of preference for three cost assignment methods that should be used: (1) direct tracing of costs wherever economically feasible, in this case, to an identifiable office, activity, or application type; (2) assigning costs on a cause-and- effect basis; or (3) allocating costs on a reasonable and consistent basis when not economically feasible to assign costs directly or on a cause-and- effect basis. The standards also state that the third preference, allocation, tends to be arbitrary because there may be little correlation between the costs and the allocation base, and costing distortions often result from arbitrary allocations. Minimizing arbitrary cost allocations will improve cost information. Nevertheless, the standards allow flexibility so that management can select methods that are best suited to the organization’s needs. The standards also state that when making the selection, management should evaluate alternative costing methods and select those that provide the best results under its operating environment.

In the first stage of assigning the estimated $2.329 billion annual application processing and adjudication services costs for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 (see fig. 1), USCIS officials identified $1.405 billion of direct costs and $924 million in overhead costs. USCIS considered as overhead the majority of costs of headquarters functions and some field office functions and centrally managed costs such as rent and information technology operations and maintenance. Of the $924 million of overhead costs, $732 million—31 percent of the total $2.329 billion cost—was allocated to field offices based on the number of FTEs assigned to each field office. This approach did not consider USCIS’s approximately 6,100 contract workers and used only approximately 7,900 FTEs of the total federal FTEs of about 10,400 as the basis for distributing overhead costs. Excluding the contract workers from the base could have changed the proportion of overhead costs assigned to the various field offices which introduces the potential for an additional significant effect on the allocation of those costs to activities and application types.

Minimizing arbitrary cost allocations will improve cost information. Alternatives to USCIS’s FTE-based allocation of overhead to field offices might have included direct or cause-and-effect assignment. For example, software licenses for applications used by only a specific office or activity and training for specific employee groups might have been assigned directly to offices or activities causing, or driving, each of those costs rather than allocating all of them in the aggregate with other overhead costs to all field offices on the basis of FTEs. In addition, other costs, such as information technology operations, that were attributable to a particular field office or activity might have been assigned using a cause- and-effect analysis, such as consumption of services, rather than a pro rata FTE-based allocation.

Federal accounting standards state that allocation should have a reasonable basis, usually a relevant common denominator. USCIS costs that cannot be assigned directly or on a cause-and-effect basis to specific field offices or activities in an economically feasible manner might have an alternative allocation basis that is more closely related to the attributes of those specific costs than to FTEs. For example, using payroll for certain employee benefits or usage for certain information technology costs might have provided a more accurate or reasonable basis for cost distribution than an FTE-based allocation. Without performing and documenting analyses to evaluate such alternatives, USCIS management cannot assure itself or others that it is using the optimal cost allocation method.

Field office overhead and direct costs were assigned to eight discrete activities (see table 5) related to processing and adjudicating applications. (See fig. 1.) The activity costs were then assigned to types of applications. As part of this process, USCIS assigned 49 percent (or about $1.143 billion) of total costs to total fee-paying applications based on the amount of time it took to adjudicate an application, resulting in varying costs per application type for the adjudication activity. The adjudication time used as the basis for assigning these activity costs to types of applications was based on historical data on adjudication time from PAS, which measures the average time to complete adjudication of each application based on daily production information input by adjudicators. Thus, for the “make determination” activity, the more complex types of applications that take more time to adjudicate were assigned a higher cost, which resulted in a higher fee. This is consistent with the methodology’s general premise, which according to USCIS is that the more time spent adjudicating an application, the higher the fee. These cost assignments used the federal accounting standards’ preferred methods of cost assignment.

USCIS assigned the remaining 51 percent (or about $1.186 billion) of its costs to applications in equal amounts. This type of assignment did not consider any variation in complexity or processing time between application types. A USCIS official told us that available production data for these activities were not sufficiently reliable to use as a basis for assigning costs to applications. Also, according to USCIS, pro rata allocation was used because these activities’ costs were not significantly driven by the complexity of an application type. However, USCIS did not justify its assumption that these costs were not significantly driven by complexity of application type.

While recognizing that agency management should select costing methods that best meet their needs, taking into consideration the costs and benefits of reasonable alternatives, federal accounting standards recommend minimizing arbitrary cost assignment methods to help avoid inaccurate product or service costs. It is not unusual for a costing methodology to assign some costs using logical and justifiable allocation, especially if more precise assignment methods are not cost effective. However, for several significant cost elements, such as those discussed here, USCIS did not prepare the analysis necessary to demonstrate the reasonableness of or justification for the costs it allocated to each type of application. Without documented justification for USCIS’s decisions in using methods that are less precise than others available, decision makers and fee payers do not have access to information significant in determining their level of confidence in the reasonableness of USCIS’s application fees.

USCIS Did Not Document Its Rationale and Related Analysis to Justify Its Assumptions about Staff Time Spent on Various Activities

USCIS did not document its rationale or any related analysis to justify the assumptions concerning the amount of time staff spent performing various activities, which were used to assign field office costs to activities. Although USCIS prepared a supporting document to describe the methodology it used, the document did not explain certain key assumptions and methods used in sufficient detail to justify the reasonableness of the resulting cost assignments. According to federal internal control standards, significant events are to be clearly documented. Significant events can include key decisions about assumptions and methods underlying the assignment of costs. Also, federal accounting standards require documentation of all managerial cost accounting activities, processes, and procedures used to associate costs with products, services, or activities.

According to USCIS, of the $1.137 billion of direct costs assigned to field offices, $845 million was assigned to activities based on data from PAS, which include, among other things, the amount of time adjudicators spend adjudicating applications. The remaining $292 million of direct field office costs, nearly 26 percent, was assigned to activities based on management’s judgment of how much staff time was spent on each activity. For example, based on discussions with representatives from regions, service centers, and the Performance Management Branch, USCIS decided to allocate 88 percent of the costs of the immigration information officers at service centers to the “inform the public” activity and 12 percent to the “make determination” activity. These discussions, including the input of the internal experts, and the rationale linking this information and related analysis with the final cost assignments were not documented. Using the knowledge of informed experts as the basis for estimating cost assignments can be a reasonable method when reliable data about the amount of staff time spent performing various activities or other factors that drive those costs are not available. However, without clear documentation of these factors, consideration given to these factors, and the rationale for cost assignment decisions made using these factors, USCIS is not able to demonstrate the reasonableness of the resulting cost assignments.

Costs of Premium Processing Services Were Not Determined

According to federal accounting standards, Congress and federal executives need cost information to make decisions about allocating federal resources, modifying programs, and evaluating program performance. However, USCIS has not determined the costs of the accelerated processing services offered through its premium processing program, which provides for the processing of certain applications within 15 calendar days, rather than the typical 2 months or more processing time. A business that wishes to hire a foreign national to come to the United States to work temporarily can pay a voluntary fee of $1,000, in addition to the regular application fee. By law, these premium processing fees are to be used to cover the costs of (1) premium processing services to business customers and (2) infrastructure improvements in the adjudications and customer service processes. Currently, USCIS is assigning all premium processing fee collections to its business transformation program to make long-term improvements to its business processes and technology. Because USCIS is not using any of the premium processing fee collections for the accelerated processing efforts, regular fee-paying applicants could be bearing part of any added cost that might be associated with processing these applications. According to USCIS officials, because the $1,000 fee is set by law, and not by USCIS, the fee was not included in the fee review. Without knowing the cost of its premium processing services, USCIS management and Congress cannot determine the extent to which the $1,000 fee would cover the costs of the agency’s premium processing services and infrastructure improvements.

Documentation of Processes and Procedures Was Not Sufficient to Ensure Consistent and Accurate Implementation

USCIS described the costing methodology it used for its fee review in a proposed rule announcing the impending application fee increases and in a report containing supporting documentation for its fee review, which was available to the public during the public comment period on the proposed rule. However, USCIS did not prepare the more detailed documentation called for in federal accounting standards, which would allow results to be validated and agency personnel to perform the fee- setting process in a consistent manner. According to federal accounting standards, all cost accounting processes and procedures should be documented by a manual, handbook, or guidebook of applicable accounting operations that provides instructions for procedures and practices to be followed.

In accordance with management’s objective that the methodology be readily understood by fee payers and others, the documentation USCIS prepared for the public was prepared so that a third party could understand USCIS’s overall approach. However, specific procedures and information used in the fee review as a basis for assigning costs were not documented in sufficient detail to allow a knowledgeable person to carry out or replicate the procedures. For example, documentation of the multistep process USCIS used to allocate overhead costs to activities did not include the percentages used to make these allocations. Also, application completion rates (i.e., the average amount of time to complete adjudication of an application) were not described in enough detail to explain how the rates were used to assign adjudication activity costs (i.e., “make determination” costs) to the various application types.

Lack of documentation of the processes and procedures makes it difficult to ensure that the methodology used to determine the costs and fees is consistent from year to year, especially when there are changes in personnel. Lack of documentation also makes it difficult to train staff in consistent and accurate application of the methodology. Further, without complete documentation reviewed and approved by management, an independent party, such as an auditor, cannot readily assess major assumptions and methods used in the process or audit the procedures to provide accountability and added assurance that the cost system is consistent with federal accounting standards and other requirements and statutes.

Accountability Mechanisms Are in Place to Track Use of Fees, and USCIS Is Taking Steps to Strengthen Control over Collections

USCIS has put accountability mechanisms in place to help ensure that it is using regular application fee collections and premium processing fee collections as it intended, and it is taking steps to improve internal control over collection of fees. USCIS has established unique codes in the financial system for specific projects, and the OCFO monitors expenditures of fee collections for those projects. Although USCIS has controls in place over fee collections, it has identified some weaknesses at the service centers. USCIS reported that it has taken some actions to strengthen service center controls in the short term, and that it is in the process of moving all preadjudication application processing and fee receipt functions from the service centers and field offices to lockbox facilities to further strengthen control over collections.

Accountability Mechanisms Are in Place to Track Use of Fees Intended for Specific Projects

USCIS has established unique codes in the financial system for its projects, and according to a USCIS official, the OCFO monitors obligations and expenditures against those codes to track spending of fee collections from both regular application fees and premium processing fees. Expenditures for the additional requirements (staff, equipment, training, etc.)— enhancements that had not been funded previously and that USCIS determined it needed to improve its capability to meet its responsibilities—are to be made from regular application fees. Expenditures for USCIS’s business transformation program, to make long- term improvements to its business processes and technology, come from premium processing fees.

USCIS has established accountability mechanisms to track expenditures for the planned enhancements of $524 million. As discussed earlier, the fee schedule that became effective in July 2007 is based, in part, on USCIS’s estimated costs for these enhancements. Of the $2.329 billion that USCIS determined it needed annually to fund the cost of processing and adjudicating immigration applications for fiscal years 2008 and 2009, over 22 percent (or $524 million) represented additional staff, equipment, training, and projects included in the planned enhancements. USCIS plans to use $232 million of that amount for payroll and related costs to hire about 1,500 additional staff. The remaining $292 million is to be used for specific projects, such as the establishment of a second card facility and enhanced delivery of secure documents (permanent residence cards, employment authorization documents, and travel documents), so that the United States Postal Service can ensure that they are delivered to the proper recipients.

USCIS’s OCFO has established unique project codes in the financial system for specific projects included in the planned enhancements to be financed from regular application fees. According to a USCIS official, the amounts that USCIS estimated it would spend on each of the enhancements were allocated to the applicable individual project codes. Obligations and expenditures made against those project code allocations are monitored by OCFO to help ensure that USCIS uses the increased resources to enhance its processing capabilities. A USCIS official told us that the status of each nonfinancial aspect of the enhancements, such as new staff hired and draft statements of work for contracts to be let, is also tracked and discussed at periodic USCIS management meetings. Some amounts included in the additional requirements are for items that will not recur, such as the establishment of a second card facility. The second facility, according to USCIS, is needed to support day-to-day production and to be available in the event of catastrophic failure in compliance with federal standards for contingency planning for critical systems. A USCIS official told us that any nonrecurring costs included in the current fee schedule will not be included in the baseline resources for the next fee review. As of September 30, 2008, USCIS had hired about 1,400 additional staff and had obligated or expended over $207 million of the planned $292 million for specific projects included in the enhancements.

USCIS’s OCFO tracks the amount of premium processing fee collections separately from regular application fee collections so that it can dedicate premium processing fees to its business transformation program to make long-term improvements to its business processes and technology. USCIS has established an expenditure plan for its transformation program that shows the estimated annual costs of the program through fiscal year 2012. According to the program’s expenditure plan, USCIS will dedicate all anticipated premium processing fee collections to the transformation program for fiscal years 2008 through 2012. A USCIS official told us that commitments, obligations, and expenditures for transformation projects are recorded to specific codes in the financial system, and those amounts are tracked along with premium processing fees. USCIS plans to use the entire amount of premium processing fees it received in fiscal year 2008— almost $163 million—for its transformation program. During fiscal year 2008, USCIS obligated over $12 million of that amount for the transformation program. A USCIS official told us that as some planned transformation projects move closer to the awarding of contracts, amounts will be allocated to the transformation project codes so obligations and expenditures can be made for those projects. According to USCIS, a Transformation Solution Architect Task Order in the amount of $14.5 million was awarded at the beginning of November 2008.

USCIS Is Moving Fee Collections to Lockbox Faclities to Strengthen Control over Collections

USCIS has documented and assessed its internal control activities and processes related to fee collections. Based on our review of USCIS’s internal control documentation, service center contracts, and independent auditor reports and our discussions and observations during visits to the service centers and lockbox facilities, we identified a system of controls designed to safeguard fees collected. The controls include dual custody of fee receipts, surveillance cameras in the fee collection areas, and balancing and reconciling fee collection amounts as an application moves through processing. Although controls are in place, USCIS has identified through its monitoring procedures some weaknesses at one of its service centers. Because of these weaknesses, and for other reasons, such as the lockbox facility’s flexibility to respond to unanticipated surges in application receipt volume, USCIS is in the process of moving all preadjudication application processing and fee receipt functions from the service centers and field offices to lockbox facilities.

USCIS management assessed the effectiveness of its service centers’ internal controls over collection and depositing of fees in fiscal year 2007 in accordance with OMB Circular No. A-123, Management’s Responsibility for Internal Control, and found weaknesses, such as fee receipts not being deposited in a timely manner and applications and fees being stored in unsecured locations thus creating some security issues. USCIS reported that these weaknesses resulted in part from the increased workload attributable to filings by applicants attempting to beat the proposed fee increases effective in July 2007 and increased application filings because of the publication of a State Department Visa Bulletin. An influx of applications and fees exceeded service center capacity to timely issue receipts and deposit application fees. Applications were kept in temporary storage containers, or pods, in the parking lot at one service center and were not being receipted and deposited timely. USCIS has identified corrective actions, including the transition of fee collections and preadjudication processing of applications to lockbox facilities, and is in the process of implementing them. According to USCIS, other corrective actions were implemented, including physical security improvements such as installing a barbed wire fence around the perimeter of the area containing the pods and a security guard to monitor the area 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

According to USCIS, at the four service centers, controls related to the fee collection process may vary, but each location is expected to maintain policies and procedures in accordance with management’s directives. We observed certain of these controls in operation at the service centers. USCIS’s procedures require dual custody of fee receipts at all times. The procedures also state that after application and check information have been entered into USCIS’s system, the checks are to be removed from the applications and placed in the data entry clerk’s locked safe. We observed the placement of endorsed checks into small safe-type boxes. However, at one service center, the boxes did not have locks.

Another control at the service centers relates to preparing the daily bank deposit. USCIS’s procedures require verification of collected fee amounts at different steps during the process. USCIS and contractor staff at one service center described the process, and we observed the documentation that was prepared to support a prior day’s bank deposit. The documentation included required items such as reconciliations, approvals, bank deposit slips, and courier signatures acknowledging courier receipt of the checks for delivery to the bank.

At the lockbox facility we visited, we observed controls such as restricted access to the entire lockbox operations area, surveillance cameras in the segregated area where employees open mail and separate checks, and comparing and balancing the number of applications and amount of fee collections at each step of the process. An independent auditor reviewed controls at the lockbox facility and determined that the controls tested were effective.

USCIS is in the process of moving fee collection and other preadjudication processing activities to lockbox facilities by March 2011. According to USCIS, benefits of the lockbox include reduced operational costs, a more secure environment for fee collections, centralized and expedited application and fee collection intake, and flexibility to address unanticipated surges in application receipt volume. For example, the lockbox facilities maintain a certain number of staff as temporary workers who can be called upon when needed.

Conclusions

Application fees are intended to fund USCIS’s immigration benefit application processing operations and other related services. While USCIS has met its objective to set fees at a level sufficient to cover its estimated costs, it has not considered the costs incurred by other federal entities on USCIS’s behalf when estimating the cost of each type of application and setting fees. Also, key assumptions and methods for allocating costs to activities and application types are not sufficiently justified or documented, and USCIS does not know how the cost of accelerated processing compares to its $1,000 premium processing fee. Further, documentation that USCIS prepared to describe its costing methodology does not provide sufficient instruction for the costing processes and practices to be followed in determining the costs of each type of application. USCIS, fee payers, congressional decision makers, and others need assurance that the costing methodology used to determine the fees for individual application types provides reliable results and that the assumptions and assignment methods used are justified. A costing methodology consistent with federal accounting standards and principles and other guidance, including complete documentation of the agency’s cost assignment process and its analysis and justification for key assumptions used to estimate costs and determine application fees, could help provide that assurance. To increase confidence that its cost estimates provide a reliable basis for setting application fees, USCIS would need to analyze alternate cost assignment methods taking into consideration the costs and benefits of reasonable alternatives, generating additional operations and production data, such as information system usage and preadjudication processing time, to prepare those analyses. USCIS’s internal control monitoring procedures identified weaknesses in service center fee collection procedures that USCIS has addressed while planning the transition of its collection and preadjudicative processing functions to lockbox facilities.

Recommendations for Executive Action

To help make USCIS’s costing methodology used for determining application fees consistent with federal accounting standards and principles and to strengthen the reliability of the cost assignments used to set fees, we recommend that the Secretary of Homeland Security direct the Director of USCIS to take the following four actions: identify the full cost of application processing services whether paid directly by USCIS or by other federal entities for USCIS’s benefit, such as the costs of lockbox services paid by Treasury’s FMS and certain retirement benefits to be paid to USCIS retirees by OPM; consider the full costs to the government when USCIS next reviews and sets application fees and document the rationale for decisions made about including or excluding any types of costs in the fee determination process; determine the costs of providing premium processing services to identify the extent to which the $1,000 premium processing fee would cover associated expedited processing costs and infrastructure improvements; and document the processes and procedures of the costing methodology in sufficient detail so that the specific procedures used and the data sources and cost assignment methods employed for each step in the process can be understood and replicated.

To better support the reasonableness of USCIS’s assumptions and cost assignment methods, we recommend that the Secretary of Homeland Security direct the Director of USCIS to take the following two actions: analyze current cost allocation methods to evaluate whether direct or cause-and-effect assignment methods that are economically feasible or other allocation bases may offer greater precision and fully document the rationale and any related analysis for using the assumptions and cost assignment methods selected.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

In written comments on a draft of this report, DHS and USCIS concurred with our recommendations and reported that related actions are planned or underway. These actions, if properly implemented, should better support the reasonableness of USCIS’s assumptions and cost assignment methods and help strengthen the reliability of the cost assignments used to set fees.

DHS characterized the issues raised in the draft report as mostly pertaining to documentation and analysis supporting discrete decisions by USCIS in developing its costing methodology. In this regard, DHS indicated that USCIS had substantial documentation supporting its costing methodology. As discussed in the draft report, it will also be important that available documentation and analysis is sufficient to explain the methodology to potential users, provide justification for key assumptions, and guide future program administrators in preparing future fee reviews using a consistent methodology. This level of documentation and analysis is critical to developing reliable cost information for management of fee- based programs on an ongoing basis.

We are sending copies of this report to interested congressional committees, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Acting Deputy Director of USCIS, the Inspector General of DHS, and other interested parties. This report is also available at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

Should you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact Jeanette Franzel at (202) 512-9406 or franzelj@gao.gov or Susan J. Irving at (202) 512-8288 or irvings@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are listed in appendix V.

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

To assess the consistency of U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) costing methodology with federal accounting standards and principles, including whether USCIS sufficiently justified and documented its assumptions and methods, we reviewed federal accounting standards and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance on user fees. We also reviewed USCIS documents related to the fee review and its methodology. We obtained further understanding of the methodology through interviews with knowledgeable USCIS officials and staff. We reviewed the design and operation of USCIS’s cost system, its accumulation methods, and the assignment of costs involved in processing and adjudicating immigration applications. We performed a walk-through of the cost system, discussed key assumptions and decisions with USCIS officials, and performed analytical reviews. For example, we performed calculations to verify USCIS’s distribution of overhead costs. We reviewed USCIS documents describing the bases on which USCIS assigned costs to its processing activities and how individual application fees were determined. To determine whether USCIS data were sufficiently reliable for purposes of this report, we discussed data quality control procedures with agency officials and reviewed relevant documentation.

To identify and assess the accountability mechanisms and internal controls that USCIS has in place over the collection and use of fees, we reviewed internal control standards and relevant USCIS documentation, and we interviewed knowledgeable USCIS officials and staff about the controls USCIS has put in place. We corroborated information obtained in the interviews by reviewing contracts for service center support operations, USCIS internal control documentation, and an independent auditor’s report on controls in place at the lockbox facility and through our visits to four USCIS service centers in California, Nebraska, Texas, and Vermont and a lockbox facility in Chicago. During those visits, we interviewed officials and staff and observed the fee collection process. Regarding controls over use of fees, we discussed with USCIS officials and staff the processes for tracking and monitoring fee collections and related expenditures. We corroborated the information obtained in the discussions by reviewing USCIS reports showing the amount of fee collections received, and we verified that related obligations and expenditures were made against the specific project codes system for selected projects.

We conducted this performance audit from October 2007 through January 2009 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: Immigration Application Forms and Related Fees Prior to and as of the July 30, 2007, Fee Increase

Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence Application for Family Unity Benefits Application for Temporary Protected Status (first-time applicants)

Applicants filing forms that require biometrics services must pay a fee of $80 in addition to the regular application fee.

Appendix III: Federal Statutes, Accounting Standards and Principles Related to Cost Accounting and User Fees, and Other Guidance

The Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 (FFMIA) requires, among other things, that agencies covered by the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act have financial management systems that substantially comply with federal accounting standards. USCIS is part of the Department of Homeland Security and must conform to the requirements of the CFO Act. Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards No. 4, Managerial Cost Accounting Standards and Concepts, sets forth the fundamental elements of managerial cost accounting. Cost information can be used by federal managers for budgeting and cost control, performance measurement, program evaluations, making economic choice decisions, and determining and setting fees. The standards provide guidance on allocating costs to products and services provided by federal agencies. The standards do not impose a specific methodology on federal agencies but allow flexibility to design a cost accounting system that meets the specific needs of each agency. Among other things, the CFO Act requires agencies to review fees imposed by them on a biennial basis.

OMB Circular No. A-25, User Charges, contains federal policy regarding fees assessed for government services and provides information on the basis upon which user charges (i.e., fees) are to be set. OMB Circular No. A-25 provisions apply to agencies in their assessment of user charges under 31 U.S.C. § 9701 (the user fee statute). It provides that when a service or privilege confers special benefits to an identifiable recipient beyond those that accrue to the general public, a charge will be imposed to recover the full cost to the federal government for providing the special benefit. Full costs, according to OMB Circular No. A-25, include all direct and indirect costs of providing the service. OMB Circular No. A-25 also provides guidance to agencies regarding their assessment of user charges under other statutes, such as 8 U.S.C. 1356(m) to the extent OMB Circular No. A-25 is not inconsistent with those other statutes.

The Comptroller General’s Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government provides an overall framework for establishing and maintaining internal control. Management is responsible for establishing and maintaining internal control to achieve the objectives of effective and efficient operations. OMB Circular No. A-123, Management’s Responsibility for Internal Control, defines management’s responsibility for internal control in federal agencies and provides guidance to federal managers on improving the accountability and effectiveness of federal programs and operations by establishing, assessing, correcting, and reporting on internal control.

Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of Homeland Security

Appendix V: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contacts

Acknowledgments

In addition to the contacts named above, staff members who made key contributions to this report include Jack Warner, Assistant Director; Richard Cambosos; Abe Dymond; Emily Eischen; Fred Evans; P. Barry Grinnell; Chelsa Gurkin; Maxine Hattery; Jason Kelly; Diane Morris; Jacqueline Nowicki; Leah Probst; and Nathan Tranquilli.