Is Interview a mere formality?

[sanjoseaug20]

If decided in another year, shhould that be summarized in teh next year statistics? I think the total number do not even add up if combine all rows.

And I can not even imagine so many would withdraw their application.

I added all years from 1992 (first year with over 300K applications) ... assuming years before that as rounding error. Total filed since 1992 = 12.8 mill, total approved 10.4 mill, total denied 2.4 mill. Pretty close. As Jack said, filing in one year may show up only next year as a decision ... so numbers for 1 year (total, approved, denied) are not expected to match.

 

[WBH]

Even if you ignore the period of a few years after 1996, the denials are still at 20-30% for most years which I believe it still a high number. We can fairly safely assume that all these people were lawful permanent residents; so seems like they were eligible for PR but not good enough for citizenship. They have gone through rigorous screening during the I485/green card process but somehow did not make it through the N-400 process. Seems a little odd to me!

English and civic tests are actually very hard for many. I don't know why new civis test are considered to be more difficult because many think old test are
easy. But there are reports saying new tests scare away a lot of potential applicants at least many commercial study class to prepare applicants claim so

 

[sanjoseaug20]

That's probably because a numbers of cases carry over to the subsequent years as San had pointed out.



Even if you ignore the period of a few years after 1996, the denials are still at 20-30% for most years which I believe it still a high number. We can fairly safely assume that all these people were lawful permanent residents; so seems like they were eligible for PR but not good enough for citizenship. They have gone through rigorous screening during the I485/green card process but somehow did not make it through the N-400 process. Seems a little odd to me!

Check this out ... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/us/12naturalize.html?pagewanted=print

Money quote --- Officials said the majority of denials went to applicants who failed a required civics and English language test or fell short of residency requirements. Those immigrants generally can try again.

If you are watching this board, there are so many people who are trying to live 180 days at a time ... I am not surprised. [ One of my friend's father has a green card for 20 years, but has presence in US for less than 18 months out of last 5 years. Now he is 65 and eligible for Medicare, and is counting days so as to meet both the permanent and continuous residence requirements. His wife would not pass even the basic civics test even if her life depended on it. ] I am sure there are lots of people like that.

I wish they provided denial statistics on "employment" vs "family" based naturalizations.

 

[PerpetualGC]

You should imagien how hard that is. Many old people came to the states
as totally English illierate when they were quite old and they perhaps had never been well
educated even in theior native languuage.

You can say that again... I had some visiting relatives from wife's birth country; very basic English, and OK, she's mid 70's (looks and acts 50-55 ) but how did she pass the exam? I think some of the over 55 and over 65 rules, plus medical disability thingies, may have helped...

Now, what was the story with 1996-1997 and so on?

It is interesting to notice that the number of applications since the early 90's has tripled or so, and the processing time has been cut big time also...