This forum gives us a lot of hope and a lot of anxieties too. The more you read, the more pessimistic you are. One thing is certain that we all have no idea when we can get the GC before anything might go wrong (for example, no similar jobs after layoff when RFEs).
The article below copied from
http://www.immigration-law.com/ shed some light on the sluggishness of the adjudications.
06/28/2003: Government's Zero Tolerance Mentality and Immigration Processing Backlogs
· Bush's 5-year backlog reduction plan was announced before the 9/11 incident, and even though no one within the Administration at this time admits it, it is obvious that the commitment to 6-month processing times under the so-called five year reduction plan is either practically gone or logistically impossible to achieve it. Current IBIS Check and SEVIS check and Special Registration check and on and on are stumbling block for the improvement of the processing times. There are more to the story. When the Congress passed the DHS Act, the relevant government employees' Civil Service Merit System and Union Rights were compromised and the employees have been vulnerable to disciplinary actions. Before the INS Commissioner retired last year, he had issued a so-called Zero Tolerance Policy Memorandum to the INS employees. The zero tolerance implied two things: Zero tolerance for immigration violations and zero tolerance for the INS officials's failure to handle matters in strict compliance with such policy. Even before this memo, the INS officials had developed a mentality of fear for mistakes and liability that could lead to disciplinary actions, but the memo appeared to have aggravated such mentality. Growing number of issuance of RFEs, denials, and delays of adjudications are undeniably related to the nervousness and fear the officials are currently obsessed with.
· We urge that the government leaders take an action to change such mentality within the agencies so that the officials perform normally without any fears. Making a mistake once in a while is part of our lives. Without doubt the officials should continue to do the right job in the IBIS and SEVIS checks to assure homeland security, but they should somehow feel at ease in performing their duties and services so that their effectiveness and efficiency are not unnecessarily negatively affected. Probably, the GAO should also look into this issue to correct problem, if any.
