US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is running a trial of a new system for reflecting case processing times. Initially, the new algorithm is being used on only a trial basis for some of the most used case types: I-485 Applications to Adjust Status to Permanent Resident (the last stage of the green card process for people processing in the US, regardless of whether the basis of the case is employment, family relationship, etc.), N-400 Applications for Naturalization (citizenship by application), I-751 Petitions to Remove Conditions (for marriage-based cases where only a two-year green card was granted initially based on length of the marriage), and the I-90 Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card (to renew or replace a traditional ten-year green card).
While USCIS has long published processing times on its web site, these often bore little relation to how long it took to actually hear back on a case. The published dates were only intended to reflect the filing dates of cases now taken up for review with an officer rather than the filing dates of cases on which some form of notification was being sent out – something often not understood by the public, and which provided little insight into when an Applicant, Petitioner or Attorney could expect to hear something back given widely varying times to complete the work at hand once the case was assigned to an officer.
While the success of this new effort remains to be seen, the effort is an admirable one and we welcome such attempts at improved transparency and to provide more accurate information better overall customer experiences