As immigration case backlog grows, so do applicants' tales of woe

Published: 2004-04-02

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Government Accounting Office defines backlogs in processing immigration applications in terms of millions of cases and billions of dollars in funding requests. The agencies that make up the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., known as CLINIC, define the backlog with stories about people like "Ms. W." An immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago who was removed from her mother's custody as a teen because of abuse, she has been waiting so long for approval of her special immigrant juvenile petition that she no longer is a juvenile, has "aged out" of eligibility for support services from the state and lacks legal permission to work. Backlogs have plagued the bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, known as USCIS, since long before it became part of the Department of Homeland Security last year. When President Bush took office in 2001, he announced an initiative to bring the average wait for processing of immigration applications down to six to nine months. At the time, there were about 3.9 million pending applications at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. By the end of the 2003 fiscal year, USCIS had 6.2 million applications pending, despite $80 million in new funding and reorganization of the agency, according to the General Accounting Office.

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