District Office Processing Dates **UPDATED** 9/12

Maybe a dumb question

Sorry if this is a stupid question but .........

For example the San Antonio office states "Now Processing" N-400s dated February 2006. What does "Now Processing" mean in this context? In other words, does it mean that they are in the Fingerprint to Interview Stage (Background checks etc.), does it mean that they are in the Post Interview stage or does it mean that for applications dated Febrary 06, they are now thru' the whole procedure and taking the oath ???????? Many thanks to anybody for any clarification.
 
My understanding is that USCIS recently changed the way they report on district case processing dates. Now they report the worst date of either:

1. Actual processing times.
2. USCIS processing time goal for that type of application.

Then, many district offices which were beating that goal are now reporting the current processing goal for that type of application, although it is possible that many cases get solved before that date.

When one sees that a district office shows a case processing date for N-400 of February 10, 2006 (for the Sept. 12 reporting) what that date means is their goal for that type of application. If a district is backlogged it will show their actual time is taking for N-400. It is confusing and not very helpful in my point of view. I think it was better to see the actuall average time for a district office, then one could see which ones are really fast. Now, any office that beats the goal will show with the same processing time.

For the other question, the processing time displayed is from filing to oath. I mean if they say February 10, 2006 for N-400 it means that applications filed on that date or earlier should have been completed (of course, except they are stuck in name check or similar) all the way to oath.

My 2 cents.
 
rwsh said:
Sorry if this is a stupid question but .........

For example the San Antonio office states "Now Processing" N-400s dated February 2006. What does "Now Processing" mean in this context?
Click to expand...

It means they are now approving/rejecting cases that were filed in February 2006. It is just an overall indication on how long it is taking as opposed to being any help for folks at intermediate stages.
 
I believe it pretty much means "we are sending interview notices to people whose priority date is"
 
It seems that it is really subjective. For instance, if processing times (in general are 6 months) then the dates on the USCIS website imply that those with xx '06 notices have been completed.

For example, in the case of Chicago, the February 10th '06 date means that the whole process is taking about 7 months to complete (as of September 12th '06) from START to FINISH.

Would that make sense? This is my interpretation
 
Actual processing time for an application depends on several factors, some of them are in USCIS hands and others on FBI hands (name check). The case processing date they publish has to be an average for a case that is processed normally from beginning to end. I don't think the date they give is subjective.

However, read my post above, when a district office posts a date of February 10, it doesn't mean that that district office will take 7 months to process your application. This date means their worst case scenario or estimated goal date for that kind of application. In most cases it will take less than that. District offices that are doing worse than the goal will display the actual date they are processing, e.g. Fresno California with a date of January 26, 2006.

All in all I think we're getting less information, because we lose all visibility of processing dates that are better than their goal. I think it is better to check the individual district office trackers in this forum, like the one for San José, to get a better idea of processing time.
 
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