The sweeping theory

H

Huracan

Registered Users (C)
I know that everyone have their own theories about how the INS goes about adjudicating cases. Some people think is PD, some RD, some FP. Most of the time it looks like a combination of FP and RD. Anyway, I\'ve come up with a new theory to explain the adjudication behaviour being observed. I call this theory "the sweeping theory", and it goes like this:

It seems like approvals go in a bit of a rocking manner, like sweeping a floor. One week they mostly adjudicate April cases, then they move to May, and a few June, July cases as in a sweeping fashion. By this theory the next step is go back to some old March, April cases, and repeat the motion, until most of the old cases have been adjudicated, or RFE or interview notifications issued.

By this theory, INS would try to work on most old cases ready to adjudicate, when it runs out of them, because of waiting for documents, background checks, etcetera, then moves to the next month, and so on. When done, it repeats the sweeping cycle and comes back for more.

According to this, next week or so, we should probably see another flood of March/April cases.

Of course this is totally unscientific, and a bit humorous. Let me know what you think.

My 2 cents.
 
sweeping sounds like cleaning the garbage from the adjudication room

Ha Ha Ha

:)

I think CSC officers go to the room and just pick up files (nearest one they can lay their hands on and get the hell out of that room)

Just Kidding
 
The sweeping theory is really what happens. Except I don\'t think it is strictly periodic...

Lets try and visualize the layout of the adjudication-ready room. This area I think is referred to at INS as the "work distribution area". Imagine several shelves or holding areas each marked by a Month and Year pertaining to Month of RD.

All cases are held in the area called "file room" while still waiting for something. Some of the possible reasons for wait could be A-file, Underlying I-140 approval notice, FP results, FBI Background check etc.
 
Once a case receives all required documentation and is deemed adjudication-ready, the file is moved by the clerical staff to the appropriate shelf in the "work distribution area". I think, this part of the process is where cases can mistakenly go to a different month\'s shelf than the actual month of RD. For example, a June case can easily end up in the pile for July and vice versa because of human clerical error. If you extrapolate that possibility, you see the potential for a case to end up in a shelf that is a few months ahead or behind where it actually should be.

When an adjudication officer has completed adjudicating all previously assigned cases s/he makes a request for "work allocation" to the work distribution area (possibly thru a supervisor). They do not just walk in and pick up cases. That would open room for indiscipline, chaos and other possibilities.

To satisfy this "work allocation" request the folks manning the work distribution area look at the shelf with the earliest month of RD which has cases lying in it and pick those cases for allocation. Lets say hypothetically that, at a snapshot in time, there are 0 cases ready for March and earlier, 10 cases ready for April, 20 cases ready for May, 40 cases ready for June and so on and so forth. If the "work allocation request" is usually for say 15 cases per request, they would pick the 10 April cases + 5 May cases = 15 total cases. Lets say at the same time or right after this request there are 2 more requests. The 1st request of those 2 is allocated 15 remaining May cases while the 2nd of the 2 gets 15 out of the 40 ready cases for June.

Lets say a week passes until the next set of "work allocation requests". In the meantime it conceivable that a few more Feb, March, April, May and subsequent months\' cases make their way over to the shelves. The next "work allocation request" will be satisfied by exhausting the earliest of the cases until the request is satisfied.

Hopefully by this time the 3 previous officers in our example finish adjudicating their cases(They say an officer spends a few hours on each case on the average). So, we would see the May and June cases allocated to those officers being reported as approved as on wave. Then we would see in another wave the approvals from the second set of officers who were allocated earlier cases that became ready after the first 3 officers\' request was satisfied. These would possibly be Feb, March and April cases. This cycle continues until each months cases are exhausted or are too small for us to track here. Because of this process which is continuous, we see approvals in a few months\' span at any given time.

What is open to question to my mind is this :
1) Is work allocation periodic? I mean, is work allocated to all officers at the same time? If so, that would explain why in some weeks we see 15 or 20 approvals only while we see 30+ approvals in the next week or 2. I noticed this happened in late January and in this current week in February. This weeks approval count is between 15-20 while last week was 37. If that still does not explain a lull in approval in the first week after work allocation, let me explain further. Lets say officers work on adjudicating the oldest to newest of the cases assigned to them . So, in the first week they would probably adjudicate Jan, Feb or March cases. We don\'t see those approvals possibly because we do not track them in our lists and folks in that timeperiod don\'t post their approvals.

However, I personally feel that this onetime allocation for the whole dept is not realistic just because approvals are so subjective. You just will not be able to lay a limit down on the number of cases an officer should adjudicate in a given timeperiod. Not unless they are tracking productivity metrics. That opens a disturbing possibility of generating RFE\'s to meet productivity norms.
     
2) Is the lull in approvals for certain weeks a pattern? Are we going to see many approvals for the next 2 weeks because of this low approvals week? Who knows?
Sorry for rambling. Was trying to make a point. Do not know If I got it across.
 
Thanks for your file room explanation

Some minutes ago I tried to write something similar myself, but I gave up when it was taking too long, and I was not sure. I think you\'ve got the main point that I was also considering, something has to happen every 2 or 3 weeks. In your case you are suggesting that it could be the allocation. I am also thinking that it could be the moving to the file room that happens every 2-3 weeks, so officers start taking older cases and moving to newer cases, when the file room is emptied, somebody puts a fresh batch of files ready to adjudicate.

Anyway, your hypothesis sound very reasonable.

My 2 cents.
 
This monday was

a holiday . that certainly could have had an impact on approvals .
May be couple of officers took an extended holiday . Let us wait
and see what happens next week .
 
janitor theory

Sorry, what was the name again, sweeping theory or janitor theory. The INS has its own theory, not even god can anticpate how they work.
 
Dee Rod: I heard there are 15 officers exclusively works for 485 cases..........

 
 
No Title

INS is not some one who works on our theories. It is like going to vegas and playing in casino or CA lotto. Anyway they are doing good job cleaning old casses.

Good luck to all folks.

/Vguru
 
the week ends at Sunday midnight

because it is very difficult to allocate cases per week
person may or may not report when he gets the news
some people (me included) do not trust the avm and hence will not post a message when they hear the avm and would rather see the notice in their hands and even then may post a day or two later
because of all these variables involved I have come to the simple concept of First Information report and the cut off time as Sunday midnight

so I guess this week is quite slow but the week is not yet over.

Lets hope for a few more approooooooovals.

My 2 cents

BY the way I do agree with Dee Rod\'s analysis

I am still concerned with the 64 million dollar question - when will I get approooooooved ?

I think it is more simpler to guess the CA lottery results.
 
No Title

Stop this rubbish theories. Do you how things work in your office?. Why do imagine about which you have no clue? if so much interested go to bollywood and write stories
 
Take it easy man

I was just sitting at work, twiddling my thumbs :), and thinking about how we saw April approvals several months back, then May, then back to a lot of April approvals, then these past few days mostly May, June, July, and then came to my mind the image of a broom, and somebody sweeping, and decided to write this funny theory.
It is mostly to kill some time as we all wait for approval, the truth is that no one knows for sure when their application will be adjudicated. In the meantime let\'s try to have a little bit of fun, and let\'s hope for maximum speed for those in the brink of being or already been laid off. For those still working, a month or two more shouldn\'t make much of a difference, except for the increased anxiety. Please Orissa, share your theory with us if you have any.

My 2 cents.
 
csc approvals

To Orissa

well - In my office sometimes u cannot get approval for ur proposal and sometimes u can

with CSC it must be very very difficult to get changes done to their system and I am sure much of the system is manual and there is definitely news about adjudication shelf and adjudication room and it is a fact that there are many cases which are just for no reason delayed and many cases which are for no reason done early

So the only theory that people can have is that they are unsystematic and just take files from a room as per Dee Rod\'s theory ( what other reason can there be to the unsystematicness)

CSC has never declared that they will do their approvals in a more systematic manner

No guarantees (I wish premium processing was allowed here- I am sure many many people would have paid in a snap)
 
all in all CSC seems to be moving towards efficiency

I say this based on my observations reading info about I-485 processing starting in oct 2000. I\'ve seen people come and go on this board. I started to notice the trend that CSC is becoming more efficient when they released the work flow for the I-485 process (probably sometime in may or june 2001). Afterwards they released info on how to make a fax inquiry regarding delayed FP notices which was a major stumbling block in the work flow. Eventually I noticed that majoriy of the applicants were getting their FP notices within the 120 day period after ND. Come December another breakthrough was achieved when CSC began to update the AVM for most people with June(I could be wrong on the month) and later cases. With this, I believe calls to IIO have diminished. I noticed recent posts attesting to a more service-oriented IIOs contrast that with pre-April 2001 postings about IIO feedback. Imagine the frustation of applicants back then who had no other choice but to wait for the fp notice via mail or via lawyers notification.
The latest good news on the horizon for the I-485 process that I found on the elirich website relates to the FP process. The info says that the applicant will be able to schedule the FP on his own by calling a 1-800 number. I know this will not benefit me and that this might cause an increase in the number of adjudication-ready cases thereby further impeding resolution of existing cases. But hey at least the signs are all pointing to the objective of six months processing time. Change is good.
 
reply to sweeping theory

yes CSC has improved
but pcee is june and dee rod is july and i am july rd
it is no consolation that csc is a little better but a far cry away from where it needs to be

They should hire a few whiz kids from IT (lots of excellent guys are on bench)
Hope we get approved fast
 
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