Thank to CAJACK’s initial post, reminding us the upcoming online discussion directly with Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, Emilio González.
The discussion is to be held on Monday July 24, 2006, 4pm (ET) at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/
Please feel free to revise the questions listed here and help to post them if you can.
1. Giving it is still not unusual for the background check process in a naturalization case to take up to more than a year, how would you put the current background check system into the perspective of dealing terrorists? Most N400 applicants have been in this country for substantive amount of time, why is still taking months or years instead of days or weeks to clear these people’s backgrounds?
2. As the Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, how would you like to address the broad frustration among waiting applicants, caused not only by the processing delays but also by the inconsistency of the process and the lack of straightforward communication. For instances, a number of applicants have found that their naturalization interviews had been cancelled (or de-scheduled in CIS term) due to “unforeseen circumstance”. Some of them were given very late notice resulting unnecessary day-offs/trips being wasted. Some applicants whose interviews had been cancelled twice without given a reasonable explanation. Inconsistency becomes apparent when CIS is at one hand telling some applicants, after their interviews that they still need to wait for their final background check to complete, while at the other hand, telling other applicants that their interviews have been cancelled because their background check is still pending and CIS cannot proceed interview without complete background check result.
3. People would be less frustrated if the processes are streamlined and provide some sort of a track of where or to which category each case belongs along with estimated processing time for that category. One common response that N400 applicants constantly get from CIS personals when inquiring case status is – “each case is different so it’s impossible to tell or compare the amount of time needed for each individual case”. Well, it is generally true that each case is different in its nature, but we believe it is unacceptable to thus draw the conclusion that the service is unable to provide a reasonable time estimate. At minimum, when extra steps are needed for a case the applicant should be so informed along with an average amount of time required to complete those extra steps.
4. When questioning why the case time is taking so long, another common response that n400 applicants constantly get from CIS personals is – “Some cases take up to two or three years, yours is not usual”. Mr. González, is two year processing time (from submission to Oath) a usual timeframe for N400 cases? If not, why N400 applicants are being constantly reminded by CIS about the time of those minority cases? Especially, it is assumed that CIS policy is to only discuss each individual case with its applicant, and the applicants had been told it’s meaningless to compare cases of different kinds.
5. Are n400 cases being processed in chorological order based on their receiving dates? It would be helpful if CIS can publish its processing times of each processing step categorized by receiving date. That way we know there is a problem if 60% of the cases submitted in 2006 have been completed while 60% of the cases submitted in 2005 have been cancelled for interviews. It also helps to expose any scheduling issues such as unrealistic number of applicants being scheduled to be interviewed on the same day, for whatever reason, e.g. March 22, 2006 by VSC
6. Currently, CIS has an online case tracking system, which can be very helpful to N400 applicants. Unfortunately the system only shows the case status inside the service centers, leaving the longest portion of most cases outside the system uncaptured.
7. The customer service representatives at the 1800 number seems can’t even access CIS case system, is it operation of human shield?
8. Parse this Mr. González, “all cases with written notification of activity have become available…” Would you please tell Philadelphia DO that their phone message is too abstract to be meaningful?
The discussion is to be held on Monday July 24, 2006, 4pm (ET) at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/
Please feel free to revise the questions listed here and help to post them if you can.
1. Giving it is still not unusual for the background check process in a naturalization case to take up to more than a year, how would you put the current background check system into the perspective of dealing terrorists? Most N400 applicants have been in this country for substantive amount of time, why is still taking months or years instead of days or weeks to clear these people’s backgrounds?
2. As the Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, how would you like to address the broad frustration among waiting applicants, caused not only by the processing delays but also by the inconsistency of the process and the lack of straightforward communication. For instances, a number of applicants have found that their naturalization interviews had been cancelled (or de-scheduled in CIS term) due to “unforeseen circumstance”. Some of them were given very late notice resulting unnecessary day-offs/trips being wasted. Some applicants whose interviews had been cancelled twice without given a reasonable explanation. Inconsistency becomes apparent when CIS is at one hand telling some applicants, after their interviews that they still need to wait for their final background check to complete, while at the other hand, telling other applicants that their interviews have been cancelled because their background check is still pending and CIS cannot proceed interview without complete background check result.
3. People would be less frustrated if the processes are streamlined and provide some sort of a track of where or to which category each case belongs along with estimated processing time for that category. One common response that N400 applicants constantly get from CIS personals when inquiring case status is – “each case is different so it’s impossible to tell or compare the amount of time needed for each individual case”. Well, it is generally true that each case is different in its nature, but we believe it is unacceptable to thus draw the conclusion that the service is unable to provide a reasonable time estimate. At minimum, when extra steps are needed for a case the applicant should be so informed along with an average amount of time required to complete those extra steps.
4. When questioning why the case time is taking so long, another common response that n400 applicants constantly get from CIS personals is – “Some cases take up to two or three years, yours is not usual”. Mr. González, is two year processing time (from submission to Oath) a usual timeframe for N400 cases? If not, why N400 applicants are being constantly reminded by CIS about the time of those minority cases? Especially, it is assumed that CIS policy is to only discuss each individual case with its applicant, and the applicants had been told it’s meaningless to compare cases of different kinds.
5. Are n400 cases being processed in chorological order based on their receiving dates? It would be helpful if CIS can publish its processing times of each processing step categorized by receiving date. That way we know there is a problem if 60% of the cases submitted in 2006 have been completed while 60% of the cases submitted in 2005 have been cancelled for interviews. It also helps to expose any scheduling issues such as unrealistic number of applicants being scheduled to be interviewed on the same day, for whatever reason, e.g. March 22, 2006 by VSC
6. Currently, CIS has an online case tracking system, which can be very helpful to N400 applicants. Unfortunately the system only shows the case status inside the service centers, leaving the longest portion of most cases outside the system uncaptured.
7. The customer service representatives at the 1800 number seems can’t even access CIS case system, is it operation of human shield?
8. Parse this Mr. González, “all cases with written notification of activity have become available…” Would you please tell Philadelphia DO that their phone message is too abstract to be meaningful?