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President Bush made a commitment to reduce processing times of applications/petitions to six months. For the commitment, the Bush administration had proposed $500 million for five years, $100 million a year.
INS sources indicate that $80 million out of the proposed $100 million will be funded from the Premium Processing Service Fees. The INS projects that it will successfully achieve $80 million within the next one year. The responsible INS sources state that the entire amount of the Premium Processing Fees income will be committed to the benefits functions and not enforcement functions.
The INS is targeting at the reduction of processing times within two years rather than five years using this fund. The INS will hire 950 new officers within a year for the Service Centers.
It gives impression that the INS is projecting the workloads based on the current situation. However, a number of factors will make this projection unrealistic. For instance, should the DOL launch the PERM program and decides 80% of the labor certification applications within a week or so, the Service Centers will be flooded with I-140 petitions, affecting the volume of I-485 caseloads along the way. Additionally, it is unclear how much of the new fund will be spent for the new Service Center, called Missouri Service Center in St. Louis, Missouri, which will handle LIFE Act cases. The new Service Center has already affected the existing Four Service Centers negatively in their processing times. A number of immigration officers have been temporarily taken out of each Service Center and assigned to the Missouri Service Center, affecting the processing times.
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azcowboy007