Did you have really fast name check?

del0175

Registered Users (C)
I am noticing that some of you (and others on several boards) have been able to get through the naturalization process in under 6 months. I am trying to understand what are some of the things that might be helping you and working against others.

For instance, if you have lived at the same address for last five years, does it help? Or if you have never had any brush with the law at all (e.g. I have never spoken to a cop all my life), does that matter? Does being of a certain nationality help? Does being married to a US citizen help?

Please share your thoughts and hopefully we might see some common themes.
 
del,
don't know. i don't think anyone knows how namecheck clearance works. i know i did my FP on feb. 13th and was cleared by feb. 18th. but it was no magic :). a year prior to that I had applied for removal of conditions for green card and i think my namecheck clearance was still valid. last year, when I went through that other process, I believe it took 6-7 months to get my clearance.
 
My name check cleared very quickly, but, as you can see, I'm still waiting. While quick name check clearance is certainly a prerequisite for "6 months or less" processing, it doesn't guarantee fast processing by any means.
 
I am noticing that some of you (and others on several boards) have been able to get through the naturalization process in under 6 months. I am trying to understand what are some of the things that might be helping you and working against others.

For instance, if you have lived at the same address for last five years, does it help? Or if you have never had any brush with the law at all (e.g. I have never spoken to a cop all my life), does that matter? Does being of a certain nationality help? Does being married to a US citizen help?

Please share your thoughts and hopefully we might see some common themes.

I think it also has to do with your name. The more common of a name means more possibility of getting a "hit" against some database?
 
RE: What happened to me with USCIS Name Check.... !!!

I am noticing that some of you (and others on several boards) have been able to get through the naturalization process in under 6 months. I am trying to understand what are some of the things that might be helping you and working against others.

For instance, if you have lived at the same address for last five years, does it help? Or if you have never had any brush with the law at all (e.g. I have never spoken to a cop all my life), does that matter? Does being of a certain nationality help? Does being married to a US citizen help?

Please share your thoughts and hopefully we might see some common themes.

My N 400 has never appeared on line. Even though they can look at it. I mean, this lady officer did not ask me for the A#, I only gave her the esc* number and she pulled it off from there. And she also told me that the name check has not come thru yet. This is unbelievable.

What pisses me off the most is this: You know this company called CLEAR that work for DHS. Well, I already have their membership, they took my iris, my fingerprints, my passport, my birth certificate, my alien card, my driver license, my money ($128.00) and they put me to the test through DHS, CIA, NSA, FBI, DIA, DEA, ATF, the Boy Scouts Club, you name it, they put me through and came out clean. And these *$#*@ are telling me that my name has not cleared yet. This is got be the biggest fu*&&^&& lie I ever heard.

Aand to top it off, I already applied for the GOES program ($100.00 for 5 years) which also belongs to DHS and it's managed by CBP who is owner of IBIS, the system used by USCIS to clear your name. And you know what happened, I am also a member of the GOES program which means I am cleared by the toughest US Govt agency, which has the mega-filter at all ports of entry if everything else fails elsewhere, and these people from USCIS tell me that my name is not clear yet, that they have a problem with my name, that I am in queue, that to be patient, not to worry, relax, take it easy, waste more time, forget about us, nationall security, terrorists crawling from the sewers of New York City and on and on and on..............................

Come on, don't give me a break, Got to tell these people to take some training at FEDEX and UPS, because after all, we are only packages to them, or at least we are treated as such....
 
no wonder

Our review of the FBI search tools revealed that the FBI relies heavily on an outdated modified Soundex algorithm to return potentially close phonetic matches. (Soundex agorithm was developed in 1918).

Further, we reviewed two Soundex studies. Both studies, performed in the 1990s, tested a Soundex algorithm on British names. In one study, researchers found a Soundex algorithm failed to match 60 percent of true match pairs. In the second study, the Soundex algorithm failed to identify 25 percent of actual matches and of the matches identified, 66 percent were incorrect. Even without taking into account the transliteration, segmentation, dialect, and acoustic errors prevalent in foreign-language name searching, the results produced by these Soundex algorithms could not be viewed as complete and accurate.

In light of these findings, we spoke with officials at the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) and DOS, organizations that rely on identity matching to help perform their duties. We found that at both the TSC and the DOS, phonetic algorithms were tested and updated to address specific cultural and linguistic variances. Both agencies used native foreign language speakers, metrics, and real data test sets to determine how to adjust their search engine results. This has not occurred at the FBI. In fact, we were told by ITOD officials that the UNI matching searches, including the phonetic tool, have not been updated since their creation in the mid 1990s.
 
vorpal,
did the journalist contact you back?

I haven't heard from her yet. There was a disclaimer on her contact page, stating that due to a large volume of e-mails, she may not be able to reply to all of them. If she doesn't respond, at least I'll know that I tried! Meanwhile, I am getting ready to start preparing my WOM.

CrossHairs, the journalist in question is Julia Preston, an immigration correspondent for New York Times. She had several stories dealing with the backlog and N-400 processing delays, so I wrote to her about the lack of organization at the NYC DO.
 
I read the phrase "WOM" all the time, what is it exactly? Some kind of lawsuit?

WOM = Writ Of Mandamus. It's a judicial mandate ordering a government agency/employee to perform their job as prescribed by law. For naturalization purposes, it's a lawsuit where, if the results are successful, a judge orders the USCIS to adjudicate your case within a specified timeframe (usually 30-60 days).
 
WOM question

WOM = Writ Of Mandamus. It's a judicial mandate ordering a government agency/employee to perform their job as prescribed by law. For naturalization purposes, it's a lawsuit where, if the results are successful, a judge orders the USCIS to adjudicate your case within a specified timeframe (usually 30-60 days).


Does anyone have any statistics on how many WOMs are filed (maybe in a year or a month) and what the success/reject ratio is?
 
Does anyone have any statistics on how many WOMs are filed (maybe in a year or a month) and what the success/reject ratio is?

Yesterday, there was a post with a link to the DHS evaluation of the name check procedure. I believe it mentioned that about 6,000 WOMs have been filed since the creation of USCIS. If you check the "USCIS lawsuit" sticky, it appears that the success rate is pretty high, as judges tend to side with the Plaintiff.
 
Does anyone have any statistics on how many WOMs are filed (maybe in a year or a month) and what the success/reject ratio is?

If you go to http://dockets.justia.com/ and search by Chertoff, you'll get an idea regarding the number of lawsuits. You can search using date range and any particular federal district. Rejection rate (i.e. adverse decisions) is difficult to estimate, but I think it's 10-15% overall.
 
Does anyone have any statistics on how many WOMs are filed (maybe in a year or a month) and what the success/reject ratio is?

"According to USA Today, the USCIS reported that approximately 270 lawsuits were filed against the agency in 2005 over immigration cases that were delayed by name checks. In 2007, that number had increased to more than 4,400 such lawsuits. "
 
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