USCIS updates processing times for citizenship cases
Long delays persist in USCIS processing of citizenship cases according to new figures published yesterday by USCIS. Many major offices, including Los Angeles, Miami, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Dallas, Phoenix, San Jose, and Orlando, now have processing times of close to or above 14 months. Some major offices are doing better: New York, Newark, Boston, Seattle and Atlanta are taking around 10 months; and Chicago, San Francisco and San Diego are taking less than nine months.
USCIS’s target processing time is 6 months, but processing times ballooned last year after USCIS announced a huge price increase and was flooded with applications just before the increase took effect. USCIS has taken steps like authorizing overtime, transferring officers and training new officers in order to reduce the backlog. Unfortunately, many of last year’s applicants will not have their applications processed in time to vote in the November presidential election.
The processing times on the list are typical times, not a guarantee. Hundreds of thousands of applications are held up because of slow processing of seurity checks by the FBI.