"The Immigration and Naturalization Service is responsible for processing various immigration applications. Under federal law the INS is required to adjudicate these applications "within a reasonable time." The U.S. General Accounting Office reports: "INS' goal is that the application process will be timely, consistent, fair and of high quality.' The GAO went on to note that what was considered "reasonable time' by the INS included 6 months for adjustment of status and naturalization interviews and 3 months for work authorization."
I am not sure if there is anyone here that would call 570 to 600 days reasonable. Further, whatever the security threat situation, we would be hard pressed to find any other application by an individual invloving a US government agency that takes this long.
Now, on to equal treatment guarantees: How about VSC adjudicating Feb.'02 applications and issuing fewer RFEs in contrast to NSC? The federal agencies are required to implement the laws in a fair and even-handed manner. Minor differences between various branch offices are inevitable but there cannot be different processes and wholesale arbitrariness in dealing with the same issue across the country! We have been browsing these forums long enough to have witnessed the scale of arbitrariness involved here.
Anybody who has lost his/her job 5/6 years after the process has begun only to have NSC ask for employment proof will tell you that the process is unfair. The law did not intend for INS to delay adjudications for years and then routinely require proof of employment as a pre-condition for approval. Economic cycles are a fact of life and if INS delays long enough, almost everyone will have been unemployed (or come close to being so) at some point. How is it lawful, from the point of view of an american worker, for someone to be assuming a position, which has been subjected to a labor market test 3/4 years ago, amidst constantly changing labor market conditions.
How fair is it for these "exceptionally skilled" "outstanding" "with advanced degrees" applicants to wait for those many years without career advancement and increased responsibility.
If fairness and reasonableness are the essence of a lawful system of governance, I have trouble undrestanding how one can call the current practices of INS lawful and thus immune from judicial review.
I apologize for my rant, but I just do not see how this type of systemic abuse can go on in a society that calls itself a modern democracy.