INS, through its Adjudications and Naturalization program, delivers various immigration benefits and services to aliens, including naturalizing immigrants, adjusting the status of immigrants to permanent residence, providing employment authorization, and granting asylum. INS charges aliens fees for processing their applications and deposits the fees into the Immigration Examinations Fee Account (IEFA). This account was established in 1988 to reimburse any INS appropriation for expenses incurred in providing adjudications and naturalization services. In 1990, Congress authorized INS to set adjudications and naturalization fees at a level that would ensure recovery of the full costs of providing services.From fiscal year 1994 to fiscal year 1996, the Adjudications and Naturalization budget was almost entirely funded by IEFA. Beginning in fiscal year 1997 and continuing through fiscal year 2000, Adjudications and Naturalization program funding included direct appropriations, in addition to IEFA funds, to reduce application caseloads. INS carries out its service function through a network of field offices consisting of 4 service centers, 33 districts, and 75 application support centers (ASCs). (App. I contains a list of applications and petitions processed by the service centers, districts, and ASCs; and app. II contains a description of the major applications submitted to INS based on number received or those of special interest that are cited in the report.) INS’ four service centers are located in California, Nebraska, Texas, and Vermont. They were created in 1990 to help reduce application backlogs in the district offices. Service centers process 35 types of applications, including petitions for permanent and temporary workers, petitions for admission of spouses, and applications for employment-based adjustment of status to permanent residence. Since February 1996, the service centers have shared responsibility with the districts for processing naturalization applications. Naturalization applications are received by the service centers and processed up to the point of interview, at which time responsibility for processing the case is shifted to the cognizant district so that the applicant can be interviewed and the case decided. INS’ 33 districts, consisting of a district office and in many cases suboffices, are located throughout the nation. The districts process 42 types of applications, most of which require interviews with the applicant or verification of an applicant’s identity. In addition to naturalization applications, districts process petitions for alien relatives and family-based adjustment of status applications, among others. INS’ 75 application support centers are under the jurisdiction of districts and are located throughout the nation. They were established in fiscal year 1998 to serve as INS’ designated fingerprint locations.In June 2000, INS shifted responsibility for processing applications for renewal of permanent resident cards (i.e., green cards) from the districts to ASCs. INS’ application processing procedures vary by application type and by office. In general, the following tasks are involved in processing an application: (1) collect and deposit the application fee and issue a receipt to the alien; (2) create an alien file, or request an existing alien file; (3) enter data on the applicant into an automated system (if available); (4) take applicant’s fingerprints and send them to the FBI for a criminal history check (if needed); (5) review the application, and other supporting documents, such as FBI fingerprint check results, marriage certificate, or court disposition of an arrest; (6) interview the applicant (if needed); (7) administer naturalization test (if needed); (8) approve or deny the case; (9) notify applicant of INS’ decision; and (10) update INS’ automated systems (if available). (App. III contains flowcharts depicting INS’ process for adjudicating naturalization and adjustment of status applications.) While INS processes about 50 different types of immigration applications, two types—naturalization and adjustment of status applications accounted for more than 46 percent of INS’ application backlog in fiscal year 2000. The number of these applications increased dramatically during the 1990s due, in part, to two pieces of legislation. First, under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, INS created a program to legalize the status of certain illegal aliens who had resided in the United States continuously since January 1, 1982. As a result, nearly 3 million illegal immigrants became legal permanent residents, and by February 1995, they were eligible to apply for citizenship. Second, under Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, certain illegal aliens residing in the United States (e.g., non-immigrants with expired visas) were allowed to adjust their status to legal permanent residence without returning overseas. This provision, which was enacted in 1994, resulted in a surge of adjustment of status applications during fiscal years 1995 through 1997.(Statistics on the number of applications received by INS in each of fiscal years 1994 through 2000 are provided in table 3 on p. 13.) To address the surge in naturalization applications, in August 1995 INS launched the Citizenship USA (CUSA) initiative. INS had projected that without a serious effort to reduce the backlog of naturalization applications, by the summer of 1996 an eligible applicant would have to wait 3 years to be naturalized as a U.S. citizen. The stated goal of CUSA was to reduce the naturalization application backlog to the point where eligible applicants would be naturalized within 6 months of their submitting naturalization applications. The CUSA initiative was found to be fraught with quality and integrity problems that resulted in ineligible applicants receiving citizenship. According to a recent Department of Justice report, INS made the timely completion of naturalization cases its guiding principle during its citizenship initiative at the expense of accuracy and integrity in the determination of eligibility. In response to the problems that arose, INS implemented naturalization quality procedures in November 1996, which were designed to achieve consistent and complete processing through revised fingerprint check procedures, the use of work sheets and standardized documentation for each file, enhanced supervisory review, and a standardized quality assurance program. In 1997, INS established the Office of Naturalization Operations, now named the Immigration Services Division (ISD). The role of the office is to help restore integrity and credibility to naturalization processing procedures, and to reduce naturalization backlogs. The office contracted with PricewaterhouseCoopers for a plan to reengineer the naturalization process and, in September 1997, the contractor issued its proposed plan, which INS is in the process of implementing. Improvements that have been made include performing a complete file review of cases before applicants are scheduled for interviews, developing a National Customer Service Center with a 1-800 phone line for information, and creating and distributing a “Guide to Naturalization” for use by applicants. As agreed with your offices, this report addresses the following: (1) Since 1994, to what extent have INS’ adjudications budget, staffing, and workload changed? (2) Since 1994, to what extent has INS experienced backlogs in processing aliens’ applications for immigration benefits? (3) How long does it take INS to process applications from the time the application is received until it is completed? (4) What factors affect INS’ application backlogs and processing times, and what actions has INS taken or planned to address them? and (5) What other actions has INS taken or planned to improve application processing? To address our first two reporting questions—the extent to which INS’ budget, staffing, and workload have changed and the extent which INS has experienced backlogs—we analyzed INS budget and staffing data, including data on INS’ contracts supporting adjudications activities. We also analyzed workload data from INS’ Performance Analysis System, which is INS’ primary system for recording the size of its workload. We interviewed INS field and headquarters staff regarding the collection and analysis of the workload data. We also reviewed Inspector General reports regarding the reliability of INS workload data and held discussions with Justice Inspector General staff regarding their reports. Questions have been raised about the reliability of INS’ data on applications received, completed, and pending. However, INS officials maintain that they are the only data currently available and are useful for discerning trends in application workload. We rounded the numbers to the nearest thousand when presenting workload data in order to reduce the impression that the data are precise. To answer question 3, regarding how long it takes INS to process applications, we reviewed the methods INS has used to estimate and report processing times. We interviewed field and headquarters staff about how these data were being collected, monitored, and disseminated. We reviewed and analyzed INS’ application inventory valuation study, which estimated the age of INS’ pending workload for selected types of applications as of September 30, 2000. We also interviewed representatives of community-based organizations to obtain information about their experiences with INS and how INS’ processing delays have impacted their clients. In this review, we focused on the amount of time that elapsed between INS receiving and completing the processing of an application, not on the amount of staff time expended by INS to process individual applications. To address the last two questions—factors that affect INS’ application backlogs and processing times and actions that INS has taken or planned to improve application processing—we interviewed INS officials in headquarters, as well as in six field offices—the California Service Center in Laguna Niguel; the Vermont Service Center in St. Albans; and district offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Houston. We chose these locations because they were identified as offices handling a large volume of applications and backlogs. Together, these two service centers and four districts accounted for 47 percent of all applications received by INS in fiscal year 2000. We reviewed planning documents, including reports regarding improvements to INS processes. In this review, we focused on application backlogs and processing times and did not conduct analyses of the integrity of INS’ processing efforts. We conducted our work from February 2000 through March 2001 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. We requested comments on a draft of this report from the Attorney General. The INS Executive Associate Commissioner for Field Operations provided written comments, which are summarized at the end of this letter and reproduced in appendix VII. INS’ Adjudications and Naturalization program budget, funded primarily by fees, has increased significantly since fiscal year 1994. The largest increase occurred in fiscal year 1996, when INS hired over 900 temporary officer and support staff to reduce application backlogs. Staffing data for each of the six field offices that we visited are presented in appendix V. INS’ Adjudications and Naturalization program budget almost quadrupled from $129 million in fiscal year 1994 to $496 million in fiscal year 2000. As shown in table 1, the majority of funding has been from fees INS charged applicants for processing their applications and deposited into the IEFA. Beginning in fiscal year 1997, INS’ IEFA funds were supplemented with direct appropriations. For fiscal years 1997 and 1998, INS received appropriated funds to support backlog reduction and improve the integrity of the naturalization process. For fiscal years 1999 and 2000, these appropriated funds were generally used to reduce application backlogs. Overall, the total number of onboard program staff more than doubled between fiscal years 1995 and 2000. As shown in table 2, the number of adjudications officers increased 78 percent (from 1,277 to 2,278 officers) and INS support staff increased by 60 percent (from 1,037 to 1,664 clerks). The overwhelming majority of the growth in INS staff occurred in fiscal year 1996. Between fiscal years 1996 and 2000, the number of contractor support staff for the Adjudications and Naturalization program increased by 86 percent (from 1,158 to 2,154 clerks). Table 2 also shows the growth in the number of adjudications officers and INS clerical support staff in both permanent and temporary positions. The number of officers in permanent positions increased 53 percent (from 1,273 to 1,954 officers) between fiscal years 1995 and 2000. The number of officers and INS support staff in temporary positions grew primarily in fiscal year 1996 due to additional funding to process application backlogs. Of about 6,100 program staff who were onboard in fiscal year 2000, about half were in temporary or contractor positions. INS officials told us that by using temporary adjudications staff, INS can more easily reassign temporary positions from one field office to another based on application processing needs. In addition to the INS support staff, INS contracted for clerical support for its service centers beginning in fiscal year 1996, and for its districts beginning in fiscal year 1998. At the end of fiscal year 2000, INS had 341 contract clerical support staff in the districts and 1,813 in service centers. Contract clerical personnel were to support the processing of naturalization and adjustment of status applications. Clerical support staff duties included data entry, scheduling appointments for applicants, file operations, courier services, and naturalization ceremony support. In fiscal year 2000, INS spent almost $64 million for contracts to provide clerical services in their service centers and districts. Although there were year-to-year variations in INS’ workload—that is, the number of applications of different types that INS received and completed—INS’ workload in fiscal year 2000 was generally larger than in 1994. An exception was new naturalization applications, which were fewer in fiscal year 2000 than in fiscal year 1994. However, INS completed more naturalization applications in fiscal year 2000 than in 5 of the previous 6 years. The size and nature of INS’ application workload are not known exactly because INS’ workload data are not accurate. The Justice Inspector General has reported that INS’ Adjudications and Naturalization workload data contain errors, are inadequately monitored, and cannot be audited because they cannot be traced back to individual applications. INS officials with whom we spoke acknowledged that INS’ workload data are not precise, but they maintained that they are useful for understanding workload trends. Therefore, the workload figures presented in this section should be used with caution and have been rounded to the nearest thousand to reflect their lack of precision. (Workload data for each of the six field offices that we visited are presented in app. V.) Between fiscal years 1994 to 2000, the total number of applications received by INS increased by about 50 percent to more than 6 million, as shown in table 3. Generally, from fiscal years 1994 to 1997, most types of applications submitted increased steadily. Naturalization applications peaked at about 1.4 million in fiscal year 1997, then declined substantially each subsequent year to about 461,000 in fiscal year 2000. The number of naturalization applications that INS received in fiscal year 2000 was about 15 percent less than in fiscal year 1994 and about 67 percent less than the high of 1.4 million in fiscal year 1997. Adjustment of status applications peaked at about 760,000 in fiscal year 1997, declined in fiscal years 1998 and 1999, and again increased in fiscal year 2000. Receipts of most other types of applications were greater in fiscal year 2000 than in fiscal year 1994. For example, employment authorization applications (form I-765) doubled between fiscal year 1994 and 2000, and accounted for nearly one-fourth of the total number of applications that INS received in fiscal year 2000. As discussed on page 21 and 22, lengthy adjustment of status processing times can contribute to the number of employment authorization applications that aliens submit to INS. This can occur because INS provides employment authorization for 1 year but may take longer than a year to adjudicate an adjustment of status application, prompting the alien to submit a new application for employment authorization. According to INS officials and community-based organization representatives with whom we spoke, the increase in naturalization applications between fiscal years 1994 and 1997 was due, in part, to three factors. First, approximately 3 million aliens who had been granted amnesty through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 were eligible to apply for naturalization by February 1995. Second, INS instituted a requirement that by March 1996, permanent resident aliens had to replace their existing alien registration card with another card with increased security features. Since the cost difference between the replacement card and the naturalization application was small, many aliens may have decided at that time to apply for naturalization. Third, a number of congressional proposals and a California ballot proposition making certain governmental health, welfare, and educational benefits contingent on U.S. citizenship may have provided an incentive to aliens to apply for naturalization. Some community-based organization representatives expressed the view that the decline in the number of new naturalization applications since fiscal year 1997 may have been due to publicity about the long waiting periods aliens faced before INS adjudicated their applications. In addition, INS raised the fee for naturalization applications in January 1999 and for most other application types in October 1998, and this may have discouraged potential applicants from applying. The total number of applications INS completed (approved and denied) has varied by type, but overall, increased from about 3.9 million in fiscal year 1994 to nearly 6.5 million in fiscal year 2000. (See table 4.) The number of completed naturalization applications almost tripled from about 444,000 in fiscal year 1994 to a high of slightly over 1.3 million in fiscal year 1996, when INS’ efforts to reduce backlogs through its CUSA initiative were underway. As INS began its quality improvement measures to address identified weaknesses in CUSA, completions declined to about 713,000 and 611,000 in fiscal years 1997 and 1998, respectively. Then, as it renewed its efforts to reduce its naturalization backlogs, INS more than doubled the number of completed applications in fiscal years 1999 and 2000, completing nearly 1.3 million applications in each of those years. INS completed more naturalization applications in fiscal year 2000 than in 5 of the previous 6 years. INS completed greater numbers of adjustment of status applications in fiscal years 1995 and 1996 relative to 1994 as seen in table 4. For the following 3 years, however, INS completed increasingly fewer applications. In fiscal year 1999, INS completed about 300,000 adjustment of status applications, fewer than in any prior year since fiscal year 1994. In fiscal year 2000, INS made the processing of these applications a priority and nearly doubled its completion level, reaching a 7-year high of more than 560,000 completed applications. INS’ total application backlog (pending applications) increased from about 1 million in fiscal year 1994 to almost 4 million in fiscal years 1998 through 2000. (See table 5.) INS’ naturalization backlog more than doubled during the same period. Since fiscal year 1998, however, the naturalization backlog declined by more than half—from about 1.8 million pending applications in fiscal year 1998 to about 817,000 in fiscal year 2000. As was the case with INS’ data on applications received and completed, INS’ backlog figures may be more useful for discerning trends than as precise measures of workload at a given point in time. As shown in table 5, the backlog of naturalization applications declined in fiscal year 1999 and again in fiscal year 2000, whereas the backlog of adjustment of status applications and most other types of applications continued to increase. As a short-term solution to reduce its application backlogs, INS allocated additional staff resources to process naturalization applications by reassigning staff and using overtime. INS also set an annual production goal for completing cases for the first time in fiscal year 1999. As shown in table 6, INS’ fiscal year 1999 and 2000 goals, respectively, were 1.2 and 1.3 million completed naturalization applications. INS met its goal in both years. As shown in table 5, the number of pending naturalization applications decreased from a high of about 1.8 million at the end of fiscal year 1998 to about 817,000 at the end of fiscal year 2000. INS officials told us that they are also planning to reengineer their processes to achieve long-term solutions to managing their workload. These efforts are discussed on p. 47. The number of adjudications officer workyears spent processing naturalization applications has increased in most years since fiscal year 1994. In order to meet the production goals it set for itself in fiscal years 1999 and 2000, INS devoted about 660 and 618 adjudications officer workyears, respectively, to processing naturalization applications. Figure 1 shows the officer workyears spent processing naturalization applications during each of fiscal years 1994 though 2000. During the 2 years that INS was concentrating on meeting naturalization production goals, the backlog of adjustment of status applications increased from about 809,000 at the end of fiscal year 1998 to slightly over 1 million in fiscal year 2000. Although INS also experienced increases in adjustment of status application backlogs in fiscal years 1995 through 1997, these increases were attributed to other factors. INS officials cited changes to section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (see p. 6 for further discussion) as a major reason for the adjustment of status application backlog in the years before INS’ naturalization initiatives. INS set production goals for adjustment of status applications beginning in fiscal year 1999. As shown in table 7, INS’ goal was 361,000 in fiscal year 1999 and 500,000 in fiscal year 2000. INS fell short of the fiscal year 1999 goal by about 60,000 applications because, according to INS officials, it was still giving priority to completing naturalization applications. INS did meet its fiscal year 2000 production goal. As shown in figure 2, the number of workyears INS adjudications officers spent processing adjustment of status applications varied between fiscal years 1994 and 2000. In fiscal year 2000, INS devoted 240 officer workyears to processing these applications, more than twice the 116 workyears spent in fiscal year 1994. Adjudications officer time spent processing adjustment of status applications peaked at 280 workyears in fiscal year 1997. INS increased its officer workyears by 22 percent in fiscal year 2000—from 197 workyears in fiscal year 1999 to 240 workyears in fiscal year 2000. The growth in the backlog of adjustment of status applications was associated with a growth in the backlog of some other application types. For adjustment of status applications based on employment, an employer must file a petition for an alien worker (form I-140) before the alien files an adjustment of status application. In addition, a relative may file a petition for alien relative (form I-130) at the same time that the alien applies for adjustment of status (form I-485). INS officials expect that as INS reduces the backlog of adjustment of status applications, these related application backlogs should also decrease. Figure 3 shows how the backlogs of these three types of associated applications have changed for fiscal years 1994 through 2000. An alien may also submit an application for an employment authorization document (form I-765) if the alien wants to work while the adjustment of status to permanent residence application (form I-485) is pending, or for a travel document (form I-131) if the alien wants to travel outside the U.S. while the application is pending. Backlogs for these types of applications have also increased. INS officials told us that the length of time aliens have to wait for INS to make a decision on their adjustment of status applications has a direct impact on the number of applications that they submit for employment authorization documents and travel documents. This is because employment and travel documents are valid for limited periods of time. For example, if INS takes more than 24 months to complete an adjustment of status application, an alien may have to apply for employment authorization 3 times during the waiting period, since the employment authorization is only valid for a period of 1 year. While INS worked on the backlogs for naturalization and adjustment of status applications, backlogs for other application types increased. For example, the backlog for application to extend/change nonimmigrant status (form I-539) increased 10-fold from 17,000 pending applications in fiscal year 1994 to over 178,000 in fiscal year 2000. INS officials told us that many aliens are left in the difficult situation of not hearing from INS regarding their applications to extend their stays at the time they are required to leave the U.S.(For statistical data on several types of applications, see app. IV.) For fiscal year 2001, INS established two additional production goals for applications related to naturalization. INS set production goals of 66,000 for the application for certification of citizenship (form N-600) and 24,000 for the replacement of naturalization/citizenship document (form N-565). INS officials stated that they set these goals as part of their overall management approach in setting more comprehensive production management goals. At the end of fiscal year 2000, the N-600 applications had a backlog of 85,000 and the N-565 had a backlog of 29,000. INS does not know how much time elapses between receiving applications and the completion of application processing because it does not systematically record and analyze such data. In lieu of actual processing time, INS uses a method to estimate processing time, but the usefulness and reliability of the estimates are limited. INS field offices also estimate the age of applications that are currently being processed as another indicator of application processing time, but this can provide misleading information. A recent INS study revealed that large numbers of naturalization and other types of applications were still pending more than 21 months after INS received them. INS has implemented a policy of minimizing adjustment of status applicants’ wait times for employment benefits. However, each year thousands of applicants are denied adjustment of status requiring that their employment authorization be revoked. Because of the lengthy processing times for other application types, applicants’ lives have been disrupted while waiting for INS to complete processing their applications. Information on actual processing times is not available because, according to INS’ Immigration Services Division director, the agency’s automated application data are incomplete and unreliable. The ISD director told us that although INS’ automated systems contain data that could be used to calculate actual processing times, INS has chosen not to do so because these data are incomplete and unreliable. In addition, INS’ districts lack an automated case management and tracking system for most applications other than naturalization, making it impossible to measure processing times in the districts. The ISD director told us that INS is beginning to examine how to develop a reporting capability for CLAIMS 3 and that this reporting capability would include calculating actual processing times for adjustment of status and other applications processed by the service centers. In addition, he told us that INS is considering how to use CLAIMS 4 to calculate actual processing times now that it is almost fully deployed to all service centers and districts. In the absence of information on actual processing times, INS has been estimating processing time by computing the ratio of pending to completed applications. INS uses the estimates to project future processing time for incoming applications and to assess its annual performance. However, fluctuations in INS’ workload and problems with the reliability of its data limit the usefulness of its processing time estimates. INS has been providing Congress with monthly reports on processing times for naturalization and adjustment of status applications since 1995. Figure 5 shows INS’ estimates of application processing times for fiscal years 1996 through 2000. INS calculated these numbers by dividing the number of applications pending on the last day of the fiscal year by the average monthly number of applications completed during the last 3 months of the fiscal year. Processing time estimates for each of the six field offices that we visited are presented in appendix V. For assessing annual performance, INS uses its end-of-fiscal year estimates of processing time. For example, based on the number of applications that were pending and completed at the end of fiscal year 2000, INS estimated that as of September 30, 2000, it was taking 6 months to process naturalization applications and 17 months to process adjustment of status applications. Since INS had set processing time goals of 6 months and 24 months, respectively, for processing naturalization and adjustment of status applications during fiscal year 2000, INS determined that it had met or exceeded its goals for the year. The usefulness of INS’ estimates is limited by two major factors. First, the estimates of projected processing time fluctuate in relation to the number of applications INS receives and completes, which in turn is a function of both available resources and productivity during that time. If any of these variables change, then INS’ prior performance will not accurately predict its future performance. For example, at the end of September 2000, INS was estimating that its processing time for naturalization applications was 6 months. By the end of December 2000, however, the estimated processing time had increased to 13 months. According to an INS official, this occurred because at the end of fiscal year 2000, INS was dedicating its resources to meeting its production goal of completing 1.3 million naturalization applications, and once the goals were met, INS redirected some resources to processing other types of applications. Second, the usefulness of INS’ processing time estimate is limited by the lack of reliable data on the number of pending applications. As evidence of the reliability problems with its data on pending workload, INS had to revise its projected time for processing naturalization applications as of the end of fiscal year 1999. INS’ inventory of pending naturalization applications as of September 30, 1999, revealed that the actual number of pending naturalization cases was about 160,000 higher than the number reflected in INS’ workload data, according to the ISD director. As a result, INS recalculated the projected processing time to be 12 months as of September 30, 1999. The original figure had been 9 months. According to the ISD director, INS recognizes that its method for projecting processing times does not provide an accurate picture of how long applicants must wait for INS to process applications, and he would prefer to report actual processing times. He reiterated that INS is starting to look into using CLAIMS 3 and CLAIMS 4 to calculate actual processing times. To reduce the number of customer inquiries and improve service, INS field offices use another indicator to provide information to the public about how long they can expect to wait for their applications to be adjudicated. Specifically, service centers inform applicants of the initial receipt date of cases that are being reviewed for the first time, while the districts inform applicants of the age of the cases that are being interviewed for the first time. This information is conveyed to applicants who visit an INS field office, or inquire about their case by telephoning the National Customer Service Center (NCSC). In general, the information disseminated by the field offices and NCSC is understated because cases that are continued for additional evidence (e.g., because supporting documents are missing) tend to take longer than cases that are approved or denied when being reviewed for the first time, and continued cases are not considered when the offices calculate the age of their pending cases. In addition, the field office’s determination of the age of its pending cases is not based on a statistical sample. Therefore, it can only be used as a guide for INS staff to manage case inquiries. Officials from the community-based organizations that we contacted consistently stated that information provided by INS field offices was often incorrect and misleading. For instance, according to one official, officers in an INS district had told applicants that, based on the age of their pending cases, the applicants would receive their alien registration card in about 90 days in one case and 6 months in another. After 6 months had passed, the applicants had not received an alien registration card and returned to the district office, only to be told that it would take another 3 months to process their applications due to backlogs. (App. V contains information on the age of the cases that the six field offices we visited reported having processed as of September 2000.) As part of its servicewide physical inventory of pending applications, INS conducted a valuation study to determine the dollar value of fees associated with pending applications that would be reported as deferred revenue in INS’ financial statements. Depending on the date the application was filed, INS assigned a dollar value to these applications based on whether the applications were filed before or after the most recent fee change. This study, therefore, also provides useful information on the age of INS’ pending applications, and how long applicants had been waiting for INS to process their applications. The study found that for five types of applications that were pending as of September 30, 2000, an estimated 767,000 applications had been filed at least 21 months previously. That is, of the approximately 3 million applications pending among the five types of applications studied, over one-fourth of the applicants had waited at least 21 month for INS to decide their cases. Among naturalization applicants whose applications were pending, the study found that 41 percent, or about 335,000 applicants, had been waiting at least 21 months for INS to decide their case. In the Los Angeles and New York districts, 59 percent and 92 percent of naturalization applicants, respectively, had been waiting at least 21 months for an INS decision. At the four service centers, the percentage waiting at least 21 months ranged between 9 percent and 30 percent. Among adjustment of status applicants, about one-fourth, or slightly over 250,000 applicants, had been waiting at least 24 months for an INS decision. In the Los Angeles and New York districts, 39 percent and 48 percent of adjustment of status applicants, respectively, had been waiting at least 24 months for an INS decision. At INS’ four service centers, the percentage waiting at least 24 months ranged between 2 percent and 28 percent. Since the cases in the valuation study were still pending as of September 2000, the total wait time for applicants will be even longer than revealed by the study. Table 8 provides the results of the valuation study for the five types of applications sampled. (App. VI provides the valuation study results for each service center, district, and region included in INS’ study.) INS issues employment authorization documents to applicants before it adjudicates their applications for adjustment of status. INS does this in accordance with an INS policy that, according to the ISD director, is intended to prevent aliens from having to wait for INS to adjudicate their adjustment of status applications before they can work. INS’ goal is to provide employment authorization to adjustment of status applicants as quickly as possible and no later than 90 days after receipt of the employment application. Prior to issuing the employment authorization document, INS is to screen the adjustment of status application for basic eligibility. If INS accepts the adjustment of status application, the applicant is granted employment authorization for one year. INS’ initial decision on whether to grant employment authorization to adjustment of status applicants is based on a brief screening of the application to determine if the applicant meets basic eligibility requirements. According to field office officials, this screening consists of an application clerk checking the application to ensure that it is complete, that an underlying petition based on a family or business relationship is pending or was approved by INS, and if needed, that a visa number is available. The screening does not include criminal background checks. Field officials told us that application clerks have had some difficulty determining if visa numbers were available and, in some cases, have accepted applications that should have been rejected. INS does not have agencywide quality controls to ensure that the screening of adjustment of status applications is done properly. INS recently issued guidance on the screening process for its service centers, but guidance and training have not been developed for its districts. INS also does not have a process for monitoring the quality of this screening to ensure that it is performed consistently and correctly. In cases where INS denies adjustment of status to applicants, their employment authorization document is to be automatically revoked. INS field officials told us that they send letters to denied adjustment of status applicants informing them that INS is revoking their employment authorization document and instructing them to return the document to INS. According to district officials, the districts routinely collect the employment authorization document at the time of the interview if the case is denied at that time. This does not occur at service centers because personal interviews with applicants do not occur at service centers. INS officials acknowledged that many aliens fail to return the employment authorization document. INS did not have data on the reasons why adjustment of status cases were denied, but possible reasons for denials included fraudulent applications, insufficient evidence, no valid underlying visa petition, disqualifying criminal history, or failure to submit the correct fee. INS also did not have data on the number of employment authorizations they revoked after the applicant was denied adjustment of status. In fiscal year 2000, however, INS completed adjudicating 564,000 adjustment of status applications and denied about 80,000, or 14 percent, of them. According to INS officials, INS had most likely granted employment authorization to most of the denied applicants and this authorization should have been revoked. Field office officials told us that many of the 80,000 denied applicants may have received employment benefits for 18 months or more before their employment authorization was revoked. While waiting for adjustment of status applications to be decided, aliens could have developed a work history that may have facilitated their obtaining employment even after INS’ efforts to revoke the work authorization. Although IRCA requires that aliens provide employers with proper documentation evidencing eligibility to work in the United States, the Commission on Immigration Reform and GAO, among others, have issued reports discussing problems with the existing system for verifying work authorization. The ISD director told us that employment authorization documents are issued before adjustment of status applications are adjudicated by INS because it is important that deserving applicants be allowed to work as soon as possible. He told us that it is a policy decision that is designed to be fair to the majority of adjustment of status applicants who are approved by INS, and it enjoys wide support in the immigration community. He said that INS has not focused on obtaining custody of revoked employment authorization documents because of INS’ competing priorities. He noted that many of these documents were close to expiration at the time they were revoked. Long wait times have reportedly impacted applicants’ lives, prompted lawsuits, increased INS’ workload, and taken resources away from application processing. According to a recent study by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, some families have had to endure long separations because of INS’ lengthy processing times and have filed lawsuits in an attempt to expedite adjudication of their applications. For instance, an applicant, who was a spouse of an U.S. citizen, filed an application for permanent residence in 1997. More than 22 months later, INS still had not decided the case and the applicant’s temporary permit to remain in the United States had expired. The applicant filed a lawsuit in August 1999 in an effort to expedite the case. In addition, a class action lawsuit was filed by the American Immigration Law Foundation and other organizations in August 2000, alleging that INS is placing thousands of relatives of permanent residents and U.S. citizens at risk of deportation because it is not promptly processing applications for voluntary departure and employment authorization filed under the statutory Family Unity Program. The attorneys representing the plaintiffs claim that their clients face deportation, lost jobs, or could not find work because of the long processing delays at INS. Officials from the community-based organizations we contacted also told us that the primary complaint they heard from immigrants was that INS took too long to process applications. According to an INS official, the long processing times for adjustment of status cases have produced additional work for INS officers and additional effort and expense for applicants. This is because applicants may apply for employment or travel authorization during the time that their adjustment of status applications are pending. Because INS provides employment authorization documents that are valid for 1 year, applicants who must wait for longer periods of time to adjust their status to permanent residence face the need to renew their employment authorization and must pay another application processing fee. Applicants who may need to travel outside the United States while their adjustment of status applications are pending must apply for travel authorization and pay a fee. If INS had adjudicated adjustment of status applications in a timely fashion, then applicants would not have to expend additional time and money renewing their employment authorization or applying for travel authorization, and INS would not have additional workload. According to INS officials, INS has also experienced an increase in public inquiries on pending cases due to lengthy processing times. INS has had to shift resources to respond to public inquiries on pending cases at the cost of processing cases, further increasing the time it takes to process applications. Data on the volume of inquiries on pending cases were not available from INS. INS officials identified three factors as having negatively affected INS’ ability to improve application processing times and reduce backlogs. The most significant factor cited was inadequate automation, in general, and lack of automation in the districts, in particular. The officials also indicated that a shortage of adjudications staff and fingerprint problems have caused delays in application processing. However, the most significant problem—lack of and inadequate automation—will take years to resolve. Automation problems were cited by both INS field office and headquarters staff as the number one factor affecting INS’ ability to process applications in a timely manner and reduce backlogs. District offices, which completed about 45 percent of all applications completed by INS in fiscal year 2000, process most applications manually because they do not have an automated case management and tracking system for processing most types of applications. The key systems that INS has in place for application processing have limitations and other performance problems that have reduced their usefulness. INS has taken action to improve the reliability of its existing automated systems, and it is preparing a business plan and an information technology strategy to guide its process reengineering and information technology improvement efforts. To support its application processing, INS uses three primary automated systems: the Computer-Linked Application Information Management System 4.0 (CLAIMS 4), the Reengineered Naturalization Applications Casework System (RNACS), and the Computer-Linked Application Information Management System 3.0 (CLAIMS 3). CLAIMS 4, INS’ newest and most advanced case management and tracking system, is the key system for helping process incoming naturalization applications. INS deployed CLAIMS 4 to the service centers in fiscal year 1998 and subsequently phased it in at the districts. INS intends to add four naturalization-related applications to CLAIMS 4 by the end of fiscal year 2002. RNACS is used to process naturalization applications that were submitted to INS before CLAIMS 4 was fully deployed. It is also used to process four naturalization-related applications. INS officials expect that RNACS will be completely phased out by the end of fiscal year 2002. CLAIMS 3 is used to process applications other than naturalization applications at the 4 service centers and 2 districts—Baltimore and St. Paul. INS has not provided its districts with a servicewide automated case management and tracking system for the majority of applications they process. Instead, most applications are processed manually. Because they lack automated systems for key application types, districts also do not have a database that could be used for workload management and staff deployment. District officials told us that they must keep manual tallies of applications completed, and they cannot determine the number of pending cases except by subtracting the number of completed cases from the number received. They said that because they cannot accurately determine the age and status of their pending workload, it is difficult for them to identify problem areas or bottlenecks, establish processing priorities among application types, deploy staff based on workload and backlogs, and ensure that cases are processed in the order received. They also said that it is resource-intensive for them to respond to applicants’ inquiries on case status without an automated system. Inquiries require staff to expend time manually locating and reviewing case files, taking time away from application processing. The ISD director acknowledged that this is a major problem for the districts, particularly with regard to the need for automated support to process adjustment of status cases. He told us that this issue will be addressed as part of the business plan and the information technology strategy being developed by INS. The business plan is being prepared to guide all INS’ application processing reengineering efforts during the next 5 to 10 years. Concurrent with this plan, INS is also preparing an information technology strategy to guide its automation improvements. A contract for both these plans was awarded in March 2001. The business plan and implementation timeline are due by the end of June 2001, and the information technology strategy and timeline are due by the end of August 2001. Since these plans were still being developed, the details and estimated implementation costs were not yet available. INS’ CLAIMS 3, the key system used by service centers to support processing of all applications other than naturalization, is reportedly unreliable and lacks management reporting capability. According to INS officials, CLAIMS 3 cannot be relied on because it (1) is an antiquated system that is frequently nonoperational, and (2) does not always update and store important case data when INS field offices transfer data from the local CLAIMS 3 system to INS’ mainframe computer. Problems with the reliability of CLAIMS 3 data on pending cases was cited as a primary reason why INS undertook a time-consuming and costly 100-percent physical inventory of all pending applications in September 2000, as discussed on page 38. Service center officials told us that CLAIMS 3 is a good tool for individual case management, but is not a good tool for managing workload because it does not provide reports to help managers identify problem areas or bottlenecks, establish processing priorities, ensure that applications are processed in the order received, and deploy staff. According to the Benefits Systems Director, a widely known example of a reporting problem with CLAIMS 3 was its inability to accurately count the number of H-lB petitions approved in fiscal year 1999. As a result, INS exceeded the numerical limitations set by Congress for H-1B visas. The ISD director told us that CLAIMS 3 has not produced management reports since July 1994, when its management reporting function failed and could not be fixed. He also said that CLAIMS 3 is operating far beyond its design capacity, and this has led to frequent breakdowns. He said that INS hopes to replace CLAIMS 3, but will continue to use it for several more years before it will be replaced. In addition, INS is beginning to examine how to provide management reporting capability from CLAIMS 3. INS has launched two efforts to improve the performance of CLAIMS 3. In fiscal year 2000 INS launched a project to resolve the capacity and breakdown problems with CLAIMS 3 and improve its reliability by (1) upgrading service center software and standardizing file servers used for data storage; and (2) upgrading and standardizing service center technology infrastructure, such as workstations, high-speed printers, and desktop printers. INS estimates that these actions will be completed by the end of fiscal year 2001 at a cost of about $12.4 million. In addition, INS awarded a contract in January 2001 for an effort to ensure that data are properly transferred from the CLAIMS 3 local area network in the field offices to the CLAIMS mainframe, and to develop a methodology for cleaning up the existing incomplete and unreliable data in CLAIMS 3. This effort is due to be completed by June 2001 at a cost of $163,500. At that point, the field offices will be responsible for implementing the methodology and cleaning up the existing CLAIMS 3 data. No timeframes had yet been established for the field office cleanup efforts. CLAIMS 4, INS’ case management and tracking system for naturalization cases, was deployed prematurely as part of INS’ response to problems with the integrity of the naturalization process that surfaced during CUSA. According to the ISD director, INS began to deploy CLAIMS 4 in October 1997 before it had met its baseline functional (user) requirements and without sufficient testing. As a result, INS had to continue developing baseline functionality for CLAIMS 4 while it was already deployed. District and service center officials were critical of CLAIMS 4, saying that it initially hindered productivity. For example, they said that field offices were not able until June 2000 to correct simple data entry errors in CLAIMS 4. If field office staff inadvertently keyed in the wrong information on how a case was decided or whether an individual had attended an oath ceremony, they would have to submit a request for assistance to a CLAIMS 4 “help desk” at INS headquarters. It sometimes took several months to correct data entry errors because the help desk had more work than it could handle. While field offices waited for the data entry errors to be fixed, they could only proceed with processing the affected cases manually. An ongoing CLAIMS 4 problem cited by service center staff is that CLAIMS 4 cannot schedule a second fingerprint appointment when fingerprints are unclassifiable or the FBI fingerprint check results have expired. Therefore, a scheduling procedure that should be automated must be handled manually, slowing the process and consuming personnel resources. The ISD director acknowledged that CLAIMS 4 had many performance problems when it was first deployed, but emphasized that it has been considerably improved during the last 3 years. INS estimates that it will have expended about $41 million to develop, deploy, and maintain CLAIMS 4 from July 1996 through March 31, 2001. Both headquarters and field office officials said that CLAIMS 4 has now improved to the point where it is aiding, rather than hampering, production. In late fiscal year 2000, INS began working with a contractor to develop a module for CLAIMS 4 that would generate standardized management reports on the age and status of naturalization cases. According to the Benefits Systems director, the major obstacle to developing reporting modules is that using CLAIMS 4 to run reports interferes with its ability to support application processing. INS is exploring ways to generate CLAIMS 4 management reports without slowing down the system (e.g., by purchasing an additional server). INS has not yet established a time-frame or cost estimate for developing and deploying the CLAIMS 4 reporting module. INS had intended to make CLAIMS 4 its single servicewide automated case tracking system for all application types. According to the ISD director, INS remains committed to implementing one automated system and is currently reviewing how best to do so. He stated that any further investments in INS’ existing or new automated systems for processing applications will occur after INS completes two agencywide initiatives. Both are being undertaken in response to our recommendations. In a report issued in August 2000, we recommended that INS develop an enterprise architecture to help it effectively and efficiently invest in new and existing information systems. In a report issued in December 2000, we recommended that INS develop a plan, within 9 months, for implementing an information technology investment management process.We further stated that there should be no major enhancements of existing systems until INS implements our recommendations. We recommended that requests for future appropriations for information technology should be limited to efforts that are small, represent low technical risk, and support ongoing operations and maintenance. An INS official estimated that the enterprise architecture would be developed by the end of December 2001, and its information technology investment management process would be developed and provided to the Department of Justice for approval by the end of May 2001. INS undertook a 100-percent physical inventory (manual count) of all applications that were pending as of September 30, 2000, because the automated data systems did not contain sufficiently reliable data for INS to obtain an unqualified opinion on its fiscal year 1999 financial statements. This inventory was also needed, according to the ISD director, because automated data were not available for most applications processed by the districts. To carry out the inventory, INS suspended most case processing for 2 to 3 weeks. As part of its fiscal year 1999 financial audit, INS’ financial statement auditors tested the pending data in CLAIMS 3 and CLAIMS 4 and found that they were unreliable. According to the financial statement auditors, the pending data in CLAIMS 3 were unreliable because some data did not upload from the CLAIMS 3 local area network in the field offices centers to the CLAIMS mainframe, making INS’ database on pending cases incomplete and inaccurate. The primary reliability problem with the pending data in CLAIMS 4 was that many naturalization cases started by the service centers and completed by the districts had not been closed out in CLAIMS 4. Due to the data reliability problems, INS performed a 100-percent physical inventory of pending cases to try to obtain an unqualified opinion on its fiscal year 2000 financial statements. According to senior INS officials, the costs of the fiscal year 2000 inventory were very high in terms of lost production and staff time because INS had to suspend almost all application processing for 2 to 3 weeks in order to conduct the inventory. According to the financial statement auditors, INS will have to continue to conduct a full 100-percent physical inventory each year until it can obtain reliable data on pending cases from its automated systems. INS was already planning to conduct another 100-percent physical inventory at the end of fiscal year 2001. Despite the doubling of program staff since fiscal year 1995, officials in INS headquarters and field offices told us that they needed additional staff to stay current with their application workload. However, they did not know how many additional staff they needed, where the staff should be located, and what types of skills the staff should have. The officials told us that this determination would be difficult because INS does not currently have standardized workflow processes for most applications and because the districts have limited automation. They said that field offices have differing staff needs because their work processes differ. The ISD director told us that INS is waiting for the development of reengineered procedures that will standardize the workflow process for each application type before it develops a staff resource allocation model to determine precise staffing needs. Officials from all the field offices we visited cited a need for more clerical staff, immigration information officers, and computer support staff. Officials from three of the four field offices also cited the need for more adjudications officers. They stated that the shortage of clerical staff and information officers (who could help adjudicate simple cases and provide a more prompt response to applicants’ inquiries about their cases) leads to inefficient use of adjudications officers. This is because the higher paid officers must spend more of their time doing such tasks as searching for files and answering routine questions, rather than conducting interviews and adjudicating applications. To help overcome staff shortages, INS headquarters and field officials told us, INS has relied on overtime funds since fiscal year 1994. The amount of overtime funds increased dramatically from $1.8 million in fiscal year 1994 to $5.5 million in fiscal year 1995, and to $12.9 million in fiscal year 1996.INS officials told us that these increases reflected INS’ efforts to reduce application backlogs. Since fiscal year 1997, INS overtime funds have stayed between $11 and $17 million. (App. V includes data on overtime costs for the 6 field offices visited.) INS headquarters officials expressed the view that field office Adjudications and Naturalization program staff shortages are due to (1) high turnover of temporary staff, especially adjudications officers, and (2) an insufficient number of permanent staff positions. In March 1999, INS reported that the attrition rate of temporary adjudications officers was generally more than double that of permanent officers working in the same districts. For example, in the New York City office, the attrition rate among temporary officers was 35 percent compared to 16 percent among permanent officers. In the Los Angeles office, the attrition rate among temporary officers was 28 percent compared to 9 percent among permanent officers. In response, Congress gave INS the authority in fiscal year 1999 to convert 50 percent (300 of 600) of its temporary district adjudications officer positions to permanent positions. In fiscal year 2001, INS had plans to hire 50 additional contract clerical staff and to redeploy 87 clerical and 103 adjudications officer positions from 8 districts to 14 other districts that have a greater need based on workload and current staffing. INS has not performed a systematic analysis of its staffing needs to determine the number of additional staff needed, where they should be located, or what type of staff are needed to assist with application processing. INS headquarters officials told us that this would be difficult to do because INS’ field offices differed in their workflow processes and their automation capabilities. They said that after INS reengineers its application processes, INS would develop a staff allocation model to efficiently distribute the right kind and number of staff to the right locations. INS continues to experience processing delays associated with FBI fingerprint check results, which expire after 15 months. However, INS has made progress in resolving long-standing problems with the quality and integrity of its fingerprinting process and missing fingerprints and fingerprint check results. The results of fingerprint checks conducted by the FBI to determine if applicants have criminal backgrounds that make them ineligible for immigration benefits are valid for 15 months. The expiration of the results of FBI fingerprint checks continue to cause processing delays at INS because a large portion of INS’ application backlog has been pending for well over a year. INS’ valuation study (discussed on p. 27) found that as of October 2000, about 335,000 naturalization applications and about 250,000 adjustment of status applications had been pending for at least 21 months. The majority of these applicants’ fingerprint results would have expired because INS’ practice was to fingerprint applicants shortly after the application was received. Fingerprint result expirations have been particularly problematic for adjustment of status cases, according to field office and headquarters officials. This is because the number of adjustment of status cases completed in fiscal year 1999 decreased as a result of INS’ focus on reducing naturalization backlogs, and the projected processing times grew to 47 months. If fingerprint check results expire, INS refingerprints the applicant and submits the fingerprints to the FBI to conduct another criminal background check for the individual. Field office officials estimated that this adds about 4 to 8 weeks to case processing time. In addition to delaying case processing, expired fingerprint check results inconvenience applicants who must go to an ASC to be fingerprinted a second time and cause INS to incur the additional costs of retaking the fingerprints and paying the FBI to analyze them. The fingerprints must be retaken because neither INS nor the FBI retain them for future use. INS did not have data on the total number of fingerprint check expirations and the additional funds expended by INS to refingerprint applicants. However, fingerprint expirations can be costly to INS. INS estimated that it costs about $48 for INS to take and process fingerprints. In addition, according to an INS official, INS must pay the FBI $16 to perform each fingerprint check. Although fingerprint costs are included in the fees charged to applicants, INS bears the cost of refingerprinting aliens if it does not adjudicate the case within 15 months and the fingerprint results expire. At an estimated cost of $64 per person, INS may have incurred about $37 million in additional costs to refingerprint over 585,000 naturalization and adjustment of status applicants whose applications had been pending for at least 21 months as of October 2000. INS officials told us that the problem of fingerprint check expirations lessened in fiscal year 2000 because INS gave adjustment of status cases priority and field offices did a better job of managing fingerprint scheduling for adjustment of status cases. Since April 1999, the field offices have been instructed to better manage the scheduling of fingerprinting to minimize the number of fingerprint expirations. Field office officials told us that they have responded by scheduling fingerprint appointments for adjustment of status applicants closer to the estimated interview date rather than shortly after the application is received to avoid fingerprint expirations. INS has made progress in resolving several problems that it had previously experienced with fingerprinting. For example, as we recommended in 1994, INS implemented a policy in November 1996 requiring that the agency obtain the results of FBI fingerprint checks before deciding a case. This policy helps INS ensure that it does not provide immigration benefits to individuals who have disqualifying criminal backgrounds. In fiscal year 1997, according to a senior INS official, INS implemented an automated tracking system to help ensure that fingerprints were sent to and results received from the FBI. In fiscal year 1998, INS established application support centers to provide greater control over the fingerprint process. The quality of fingerprints taken and fingerprint processing times have also improved. A problem with missing fingerprints and fingerprint check results that began in 1997 was resolved by the end of 2000, according to INS officials. The problem, according to INS officials, was associated with a new system employed by the FBI involving machine readable data tapes. Under this system, FBI required its participating agencies to submit both fingerprint cards and a tape identifying the applicant, and the FBI recorded the fingerprint check results on the tape and returned it to the agency. According to INS officials, tapes and fingerprint cards frequently disappeared or were damaged during shipment or the tapes were missing some fingerprint check results. INS data indicate that from June 1999 through March 2000, INS resent 228,356 fingerprints to the FBI because INS had not received FBI responses for them. In many of these cases, according to a senior INS official, INS had to take new fingerprints from the applicant because the fingerprint card could not be found or had already been destroyed by the FBI, and INS incurred the additional costs of retaking the fingerprints and paying for the FBI analysis. Beginning in November 1999, the FBI replaced the tape system with the one currently in use: the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Information System. This system involves electronic submission of fingerprints to the FBI and electronic transmission of the FBI fingerprint results to the requesting agency. Both field office and headquarters officials indicated that the new system, based on its performance in fiscal year 2000, seems to have corrected the problem of missing FBI fingerprint results. Most FBI responses are received within 24 hours of submission, including electronic rap sheets on persons identified as having an arrest record. INS’ performance measure for fiscal year 2000 was to reduce the average amount of time between fingerprinting the alien and receiving the FBI results from 3 weeks to 1 week. With implementation of the new system, the processing time was reduced to 1 day in the final quarter of fiscal year 2000. INS is considering exploring whether to electronically store fingerprints, according to the ISD director. Storage of electronic fingerprints would avert the need to retake fingerprints should the FBI results expire. Stored fingerprints would also allow INS to avoid the time and cost of retaking fingerprints for the same applicant applying for subsequent immigration benefits, such as adjustment of status applicants who become eligible to apply for citizenship. In addition to actions taken by INS in response to specific identified problems—such as hiring temporary staff to address staff shortages and changing the point in the application process that fingerprints are taken in order to reduce the incidence of expired results—INS has taken or is considering other actions to better manage application processing. These actions, which we believe are steps in the right direction, include (1) launching production management initiatives to reduce application backlogs; (2) establishing a National Records Center to consolidate storage and expedite retrieval of alien files; and (3) reengineering the processes used to adjudicate adjustment of status and seven other applications. INS created an Office of Production Management to direct and oversee INS’ backlog reduction efforts. The efforts of this office have included guiding and monitoring the application production activities of field offices, establishing teams to reduce the processing time of continued cases, and focusing processing efforts on the oldest pending naturalization—those filed prior to July 1, 1998. In fiscal year 1998, INS created the Office of Production Management within the Immigration Services Division to lead its efforts to reduce naturalization backlogs. This office was responsible for directing and monitoring field office backlog reduction efforts, evaluating and directing resources, providing analytical services, and ensuring that any problems delaying application processing were identified and resolved. Beginning in fiscal year 2000, reducing the backlog of adjustment of status applications was added to its responsibilities. The Production Management Office initially focused on reducing naturalization backlogs in the five districts that received the highest number of naturalization applications—Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and San Francisco. Each of the five districts was required to develop a backlog reduction plan. By August 31, 1998, the other 28 districts were also required to submit backlog reduction plans. For each field office, INS established an annual production goal for naturalization applications beginning in fiscal year 1999, and for adjustment of status applications beginning in fiscal year 2000. INS required each field office to submit a weekly production report and a monthly production plan for meeting its goals. A backlog reduction team comprised of representatives from INS headquarters, service centers, regional offices, and districts, was responsible for monitoring production efforts in the field offices. INS officials credit the leadership of the Office of Production Management and the cooperative efforts of the field offices in helping INS meet its production goals in fiscal years 1999 and 2000. A contractor study conducted for INS indicated that about 43 percent of 7,843 naturalization cases surveyed were continued. An applicant’s case may be continued, rather than approved or denied, for several reasons, including missing documentation in the case file, failure to appear for the interview, failure to pass the English or civics test, and expired fingerprint results. INS did not have data indicating how long it takes to finish processing applications once they are continued, but an INS official told us that cases can be continued for long periods of time. This is because INS adjudicators move on to other applications that may be quicker to process and, with no data system to inform them whether they are working on cases in the order in which they were received, they do not get feedback on the number or age of continued cases. INS has many pending naturalization cases that were submitted before July 1998. INS reported that, as of August 25, 2000, about 165,000 naturalization applications submitted before July 1998 were still pending. These cases had not yet been adjudicated, according to an INS official, because (1) in fiscal years 1997 and 1998, they were inadvertently dropped in the course of transferring data from one automated system used by service centers (CLAIMS 3) to another used by district offices (RNACS) and (2) districts focused on completing new, rather than continued, cases. Since May 2000, INS has assigned priority to completing these pre-July 1998 cases. INS officials could not project when these naturalization cases would be completed, but they said they were monitoring progress and, since August 2000, have required the field offices to submit biweekly reports on the status of these cases. As of March 1, 2001, INS reported that there were about 63,000 naturalization cases still pending that were submitted before July 1998. (See app.V for statistics on the pre-July 1998 naturalization cases for the four districts we visited.) To help reduce the backlog of continued cases, INS’ Production Management Office implemented a continuation review team initiative in March 2000. The team, comprised of adjudications officers and managers from the regions and districts, was tasked with reviewing and improving district office procedures for handling continued cases. The team reviewed five districts in fiscal year 2000, including San Francisco, Atlanta, Harlingen, Houston, and Los Angeles. These districts were reportedly selected because they had a relatively large number of continued cases based on their monthly production plans or were known to have implemented some improvements or best practices in this area. In addition, INS wanted to include districts from each of the three INS regions. Two of the districts we visited had received continuation team reviews in fiscal year 2000—Houston in May and Los Angeles in June. According to the team’s report for Houston, during fiscal year 1999, Houston had focused primarily on completing new cases rather than continued ones. In fiscal year 2000, however, Houston initiated improvements to its processing of continued cases. Houston began to focus on its backlog of continued naturalization cases and set a timeframe of 60 days for adjudications officers to complete cases continued for additional documentation. The report made no recommendations for improving the processing of continued cases by the Houston district. The team’s report for Los Angeles noted that in fiscal year 1998, Los Angeles had centralized its more complicated continued cases and formed a continuation unit at the main district office to complete continued cases. The report recommended that the Los Angeles district track continued cases and implement a system at 30-, 60- and 90-day intervals that would call up continued cases and hold adjudications officers accountable for their completion. According to INS officials, the continuation review team is an effective tool for improving the management of continued cases. They said they plan to expand the work of the team during fiscal year 2001 to include continued adjustment of status cases. A major problem revealed by CUSA was that INS had difficulty locating alien files and having them available on a timely basis for review by adjudicators. Many naturalization cases during CUSA were adjudicated without INS locating and reviewing the alien file, thereby increasing the likelihood of adjudication errors. Congress approved the establishment of the INS National Records Center in October 1998. The creation of the center had been under discussion for almost 2 decades. The records center opened November 15, 1999, in a leased underground facility in Lee’s Summit, MO. Before the center opened, INS stored files at more than 80 field offices. The primary mission of the record center is to provide timely access to information from alien files and subsidiary automated data systems by consolidating records in one location and using state-of-the-art records management technology. INS expects to transfer all alien files to the center by June 2001, according to the center’s director. INS expects application processing time to improve as a result of centralizing alien files. Having the record center, according to senior INS officials, will enable INS adjudicators to obtain needed alien files within a few days, as opposed to the weeks or months that it took under the decentralized system. Additionally, it will increase the likelihood that the alien files will be found. The center’s standard for responding to requests (i.e., locating and shipping the alien file) is 3 days. According to information provided by the center, the average response time for February through August 2000 was 2.3 days. As of November 22, 2000, the center had responded to approximately 370,000 file transfer requests and had located all but 50 files. INS is evaluating a study submitted by an INS contractor at the end of fiscal year 1999 for reengineering adjustment of status and seven other types of applications. Collectively, the applications included in the study represented 71 percent of INS’ workload in fiscal year 1998. INS initiated the reengineering effort because it believed that many aspects of the naturalization reengineering effort could also be applied to other application processes. In addition, INS had experienced nearly a five-fold increase in its pending workload between fiscal years 1992 and 1998 for these eight application types. The reengineering study found that INS lacked standardized processes, the integrity of INS processes could be strengthened, and opportunities existed to better utilize technology. With regard to processes, the study found that applications were not consistently adjudicated because the procedures used to process applications varied by office, most field offices allowed their adjudicators to review cases using minimal guidelines, and standard quality controls were lacking. In addition, productivity and processing times varied across field offices, and a lot of time was spent locating and moving alien files. The technical support priorities of field office staff cited in the study included the need for enhancing case management and tracking, minimizing duplicative data entry, and providing information for management reporting and decision making. The study recommended implementing new consolidated processes and forms, quality controls, and a comprehensive fraud-prevention program. It also recommended creating an electronic alien file to reduce paper file movement and costs, and a servicewide automated case management and tracking system for all applications. The ISD director told us that INS is evaluating these recommendations and will make decisions regarding them after completing two related strategic plans currently being developed to guide INS’ improvement efforts during the next 5 years—the business strategic plan for reengineering application processing and the information technology strategic plan. He estimated that it will take 5 years or more for INS to develop and implement the reengineered processes and implement a servicewide automated system to process all types of applications. INS continues to experience significant problems managing its application workload despite years of increasing budgets and staff. Notwithstanding having paid fees to INS for processing their applications, aliens face long waits for a resolution to their case and have difficulty obtaining accurate information on how long they can expect to wait. INS acknowledges, and we agree, that it needs better automation capability and a more streamlined application process to provide improved levels of service. Automation improvements, including improvements to the reliability of data in CLAIMS 3 and CLAIMS 4, would provide INS with the management information it needs to determine how long aliens have been waiting for their applications to be processed. Automation improvements would also help INS determine whether it is processing all the applications it receives, working on applications in the order in which they are received, and providing prompt and correct responses to applicants’ inquiries about the status of their cases. Although INS believes that additional staff would reduce its application backlog problem, it is not now in a position to determine the extent to which staff shortages play a part in this problem. INS does not know how to maximize the deployment of staff to process applications in a timely fashion because it lacks a systematically developed staff resource allocation model. Such a model could help INS determine the right number and types of staff it needs, efficiently distribute staff to the right locations, and ensure that resources are deployed commensurate with the workload to minimize backlogs and processing times. INS’ policy of minimizing wait times by granting work authorization to aliens before it fully adjudicates their adjustment of status cases has provided thousands of aliens with the opportunity to work in the United States. However, many of these aliens were later denied permanent resident status, and while INS reportedly revoked their employment authorization, these aliens had already been allowed to work for many months and develop a work history that may facilitate obtaining future employment. INS could reduce the need to revoke employment authorization documents by providing guidance and training on application screening to its district staff and taking steps to ascertain whether improvements could be made to the application screening process. INS’ long-standing problems with its fingerprinting process, including poor-quality fingerprints and ensuring that all fingerprint check results are obtained, appear to have been largely corrected. Nevertheless, because over 585,000 applicants had been waiting at least 21 months for their naturalization and adjustment of status applications to be decided as of October 2000, fingerprint check expirations continue to be problematic for pending cases. With digital technology now being used by INS to fingerprint aliens and transmit the fingerprints electronically to the FBI, there may be opportunities to store the fingerprints electronically and save the time and expense associated with the refingerprinting process. We recommend that the INS Commissioner ensure that INS do the following: Develop the capability and begin to calculate and report actual processing times for applications as soon as reliable automated data are available from CLAIMS 3 and CLAIMS 4. This includes naturalization applications processed by service centers and districts and all other applications processed by service centers. Develop guidance and training for districts on how to screen adjustment of status applications in order to reduce the number of errors made in the initial review process that is used to determine whether individuals whose adjustment of status applications are pending should be granted work authorization. Periodically review a sample of denied adjustment of status cases processed at service centers and districts to determine how many and what types of cases should not have been granted employment authorization during the screening process. This could provide useful feedback to INS on how it may improve its guidance and training for conducting the initial reviews of adjustment of status applications. Develop a staffing model for processing naturalization applications and expand the model to include other application types as their processes are reengineered and automated. Prepare a cost-benefit analysis on the digital storage of fingerprints. As part of this analysis, INS should calculate the time and cost savings that would result from eliminating the need to refingerprint applicants whose fingerprint check results expire. INS should also calculate the costs that INS or the FBI would incur as a result of storing the fingerprints. We requested comments on a draft of this report from the Attorney General. In a letter dated April 20, 2001, which we have reprinted in appendix VII, the INS Executive Associate Commissioner for Field Operations concurred with the report and its recommendations. We have also included in the final report technical comments and suggestions from INS as appropriate. As arranged with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days after its issue date. At that time, we will send copies to the Honorable John Ashcroft, Attorney General; Kevin Rooney, Acting Commissioner, Immigration and Naturalization Service; and other interested parties. We will also make copies available to others upon request. The major contributors to this report are acknowledged in appendix VIII. If you or your staff have any questions on this report, please call me or Evi Rezmovic on (202) 512-8777. Description This form is used by permanent residents18 years old or older to apply to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. This form is used by a person who is in the United States to apply to adjust to permanent resident status or to register for permanent residence. This form is also used by certain Cuban nationals to request to change the date of lawful permanent residence in the United States. This form is used by permanent residents and conditional residents to apply for replacement of lost permanent resident cards, or renewal of permanent resident cards that have expired. Employers use this form to petition on behalf of an alien (certain nonimmigrant workers) to enable the alien to come to the United States temporarily to perform services or labor, or to receive training by the employer. This form is also used to petition for an extension of stay or change of status. A U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States may file this form to establish the relationship of certain alien relatives who wish to immigrate to the United States as a permanent resident. This form is used to apply for a: (1) reentry permit, (2) refugee travel document, or (3) advance parole document. Permanent or conditional residents apply for reentry to the United States (if returning from a trip abroad of more than a year’s duration) without having to obtain a returning resident visa from an American consulate. Applicants in a refugee or asylee status must obtain a refugee travel document to return to the United States after temporary travel abroad. Applicants with a pending adjustment-of-status application must apply for advance parole if they are seeking to travel abroad temporarily for emergent personal or bona fide business reasons. In addition, if a person is outside the United States and must travel to the United States temporarily for emergent business or personal reasons, he or she may apply for an advance parole document to be paroled into the United States on humanitarian grounds if he or she cannot obtain the necessary visa and any required waiver of excludability. Parole cannot be used to circumvent normal visa issuing procedures, and it is not a means to bypass delays in visa issuance. This form is used by an employer to petition for an alien worker to immigrate to the United States based on employment. This form is used for a nonimmigrant to apply for an extension of stay in the United States or to change to another nonimmigrant status. This form is used by a conditional resident who obtained such status through marriage to apply to have the conditions removed on his or her resident status. This form is used by certain aliens temporarily in the United States to request an employment authorization document. The employment authorization document is valid for 1 year, and applicants must renew it if it expires. Referred to as adjustment of status application throughout the report. Is N-400 approvable? Is the N-400 approvable? Supervisory review is performed on any case that may be denied because the applicant has a criminal history or a medical disability or the alien file cannot be located. Appointment scheduled for employment authorization document (EAD) Is the I-485 approvable? I-485 denial notice sent to applicant after supervisory review End. Alien file sent to National Records Center for storage Form I-765 is the Application for Employment Authorization. Appointment scheduled for employment authorization document (EAD) Is the I-485 approvable? Form I-765 is the Application for Employment Authorization. Appendix IV: INS Workload Data on Major Types of Applications Number of applications (in thousands) Appendix V: Statistical Profile of INS Field Offices Visited Completed applications are the sum of approved and denied applications. Service centers did not begin to process I-140 applications until fiscal year 1997. Staff onboard as of the end of each fiscal year. Includes adjudications officers and supervisory adjudications officers. Includes term (up to 4 years) appointments, rehired annuitants, and temporary (up to 2 years) appointments. The majority of the temporary officers were assigned to districts. Service centers do not adjudicate naturalization applications. Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) Naturalization applications are completed at the districts and not at the service centers. Completed applications are the sum of approved and denied applications. Production goals were not established for service centers in fiscal year 1999. Officer Workyears Spent Processing Applications Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400)Application for adjustment of status (I-485)Application to replace permanent resident card (I-90) Petition for nonimmigrant worker (I-129) Petition for alien relative (I-130) Application for travel document (I-131) Immigrant petition for alien worker (I-140)Application to extend/change nonimmigrant status (I-539) Petition to remove conditions on residence (I-751) Application for employment authorization (I-765) All other applications Total 1994 0 2.4 7.5 16.4 15.1 0 2.9 10.0 2.5 14.6 3.0 74.4 1995 0 1.6 12.0 12.0 18.3 0 2.8 6.0 3.7 17.8 2.6 76.8 1996 5.7 1.3 16.3 16.3 21.1 0 2.5 6.2 3.4 17.1 2.4 87.3 1997 0 2.5 6.7 6.7 23.8 0.3 3.0 6.7 3.2 21.4 3.2 85.8 1998 5.3 3.2 2.2 2.2 12.5 0.4 2.9 6.9 1.5 21.9 3.6 76.1 1999 1.7 4.2 6.4 6.4 9.6 0.2 3.8 3.3 2.2 21.4 4.2 82.9 2000 20.1 5.5 11.2 11.2 5.9 0.3 4.8 3.8 1.9 24.2 12.8 121.7 Includes adjudications officers’ overtime, but not officers’ administrative activities (such as training or leave). Also, does not always include INS officers, such as inspectors, detailed to the Adjudications and Naturalization program because INS does not collect these data. Staff onboard as of the end of each fiscal year. Includes adjudications officers and supervisory adjudications officers. Includes term (up to 4 years) appointments, rehired annuitants, and temporary (up to 2 years) appointments. The majority of the temporary officers were assigned to districts. Service centers do not adjudicate naturalization applications. Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) N-400 applications are completed at the districts and not at the service centers. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Completed applications are the sum of approved and denied applications. Districts did not routinely receive or process these applications. They were sent to service centers for processing. INS did not establish production goals for I-485 applications in fiscal year 1999. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485)Application to replace permanent resident card (I-90) Petition for nonimmigrant worker (I-129)Petition for alien relative (I-130) Application for travel document (I-131) Immigrant petition for alien worker (I-140) Fiscal year 1997 37.6 19.1 1.10.1 1.1 1.5 3.7 24.7 0 1.9 0.2 0 0.1 1.0 1.5 3.0 25.2 0.1 1.1 1.3 3.3 51.8 0.3 0.9 0.7 6.5 73.1 1998 19.9 16.2 3.0 0 3.7 4.9 0 0.2 1.1 1.9 4.1 55.0 1999 33.7 9.4 1.3 0 4.5 2.6 0 0.2 1.1 2.3 4.3 59.4 2000 39.2 11.3 0.9 0 1.6 1.4 0 0.2 0.7 2.5 6.1 63.8 Districts did not routinely process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Less than 20 officer hours. Staff onboard as of the end of each fiscal year. Includes adjudications officers and supervisory adjudications officers. Includes term (up to 4 years) appointments, rehired annuitants, and temporary (up to 2 years) appointments. Age of Cases Being Processed in September 2000 Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) Application for travel document (I-131) Petition to classify orphan as an immediate relaitve (I-600 and I-600A) Application for employment authorization (I-765) Application for certification of citizenship (N-600) The Chicago District Office does not process I-600 petitions. Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Completed applications are the sum of approved and denied applications. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. INS did not establish production goals for I-485 applications in fiscal year 1999. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. 1.2 0.7 0.1 0.1 0.4 1.4 3.4 14.3 2000 19.5 2.5 1.6 0 1.6 1.4 0.1 0.3 0.7 2.4 11.0 0.1 0.4 0.7 1.6 17.6 0.1 0.4 0.5 1.1 16.5 0 1.9 1.5 0 0.1 0.4 1.2 1.0 22.1 0.1 0.2 1.5 1.3 29.7 Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Less than 20 officer hours. Staff onboard as of the end of each fiscal year. Includes adjudications officers and supervisory adjudications officers. Includes term (up to 4 years) appointments, rehired annuitants, and temporary (up to 2 years) appointments. Age of Cases Being Processed in September 2000 Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) Application for travel document (I-131) Petition to classify orphan as an immediate relative (I-600 and I-600A) Application for employment authorization (I-765) Application for certification of citizenship (N-600) Estimated Processing Time Based on the Last 3 Months of FY 1996-2000 (in months) Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Completed applications are the sum of approved and denied applications. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. INS did not establish production goals for I-485 applications in fiscal year 1999. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Less than 20 officer hours. Staff onboard as of the end of each fiscal year. Includes adjudications officers and supervisory adjudications officers. Includes term (up to 4 years) appointments, rehired annuitants, and temporary (up to 2 years) appointments. The majority of the temporary officers were assigned to districts. Age of Cases Being Processed in September 2000 Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) Application for travel document (I-131) Petition to classify orphan as an immediate relative (I-600 and I-600A) Application for employment authorization (I-765) Application for certification of citizenship (N-600) Estimated Processing Time Based on the Last 3 Months of FY 1996-2000 (in months) Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. INS did not establish production goals for I-485 applications in fiscal year 1999. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Districts did not routinely receive or process these petitions. They were sent to service centers for processing. Less than 20 officer hours. Staff onboard as of the end of each fiscal year. Includes adjudications officers and supervisory adjudications officers. Includes term (up to 4 years) appointments, rehired annuitants, and temporary (up to 2 years) appointments. Age of Cases Being Processed in September 2000 Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) Application for travel document (I-131) Petition to classify orphan as an immediate relative (I-600 and I-600A) Application for employment authorization (I-765) Application for certification of citizenship (N-600) Estimated Processing Time Based on the Last 3 Months of FY 1996-2000 (in months) Type of application Application for naturalization (N-400) Application for adjustment of status (I-485) In addition to the above, Gretchen Bornhop, Nancy Kawahara, Jennifer Kim, David Alexander, Ann H. Finley, and Jennifer Bryning made key contributions to this report.

Summary: Congress, the media, and immigrant advocacy groups have criticized the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for its inability to provide immigrants with timely decisions on their applications for such benefits as naturalization and legal permanent residence. INS continues to experience significant problems managing its application workload despite years of increasing budgets and staff. Automation improvements would provide INS with the management information it needs to determine how long aliens have been waiting for their applications to be processed. Automation improvements would also help INS determine whether it is processing all the applications it receives, working on applications in the order in which they are received, and providing prompt and correct responses to applicants' inquiries about the status of their cases. INS does not know how to maximize the deployment of staff to process applications in a timely fashion because it lacks a systematically developed staff resource allocation model. Such a model could help INS determine the right number and types of staff it needs, efficiently distribute staff to the right locations, and ensure that resources are deployed commensurate with the workload to minimize backlogs and processing times. INS could reduce the need to revoke employment authorization documents by providing guidance and training on application screening to its district staff and taking steps to ascertain whether improvements could be made to the application screening process. INS' long-standing problems with its fingerprinting process appear to have been largely corrected. With digital technology now being used by INS to fingerprint aliens and transmit the fingerprints electronically to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, opportunities may exist to store the fingerprints electronically and save the time and expense associated with the refingerprinting process.