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.