Andrew R. Arthur
USCIS Stats Show Where the Administration’s Focus Is
Hint: It’s on getting ‘inadmissible’ aliens work cards, not worrying about immigrants doing it ‘the right way’
By Andrew R. Arthur on May 3, 2024
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) publishes so much data it’s often difficult to find anything. But pore over it and you can see where the administration’s real focus is: expediting employment documents for migrants who have no right to be here, not accommodating aliens doing it “the right way” or on helping American workers (both citizens and lawful immigrants) find jobs. If you’re a citizen waiting for your would-be immigrant spouse to complete the paperwork to receive a green card — keep waiting, the administration has more important people to help.
Number of Service-Wide Forms. USCIS publishes a quarterly document captioned “Number of Service-Wide Forms by Quarter, Form Status, and Processing Time”, which is basically a running tally of the applications the agency has received and completed, and the number that remain pending.
At the end of the third quarter of FY 2019, for example, it shows that USCIS had about 330,000 pending asylum applications (Form I-589), about 753,000 pending employment authorization applications (Form I-765), more than 1.5 million Petitions for Alien Relative (Form I-130), and around 35,000 Immigrant Petitions for Alien Workers (Form I-140).
One year later, at the end of the third quarter of FY 2020, the number of asylum applications waiting for adjudication sat near 374,000, there were about 604,000 employment authorization applications, about 1.45 million immediate relative petitions, and just over 47,000 pending I-140s for alien workers.
https://cis.org/Arthur/USCIS-Stats-Show-Where-Administrations-Focus
