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ARTICLE · 16 MAY 2018

At A Crossroad: Consular Options To Immigrate As USCIS Adjustment Backlogs Increase

Dickinson Wright PLLC
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In order to uphold the "integrity of our nation's immigration system," on October 1, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began to phase-in a mandate ...

United StatesImmigration
Kathleen Walker
Kathleen Walker
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In order to uphold the "integrity of our nation's immigration system," on October 1, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began to phase-in a mandate of in person adjustment of status (I-485) interviews for employment based cases at USCIS field offices nationwide. Previously, USCIS field offices would rarely interview an employment based adjustment applicant. Prior to 1992, however, the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) would routinely interview employment based adjustment applicants. So, there is some precedent for the policy.

On May 1, USCIS published its performance statistics related to adjustment of status applications for the first quarter of the 2018 federal fiscal year, which commenced on October 1, 2017. These statistics are just beginning to reflect the impact of these interview changes at the USCIS field office level. For initial comparison, however, it is obvious that staffing challenges for USCIS will become

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