On March 12, USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna announced plans to close USCIS’s almost two dozen international field offices.

The work performed by these offices, including refugee processing, assisting USD citizens with overseas adoptions, and processing of family-based cases filed by US citizens living abroad within the jurisdiction of these offices, would most likely shift to US-based USCIS facilities already significantly overburdened and with growing processing times.

The move is being presented as a cost-saving measure, with a claim that resources will be shifted to reducing backlogs at US-based offices. It is extremely unclear whether backlog reduction is at all a priority for the administration, or whether the move is in fact geared towards further decreasing resources and access for those going through the process -refugees in particular.