Aug. 9 Update: USCIS announced in a news release today that they have cancelled plans to close operations at 7 international field offices: Beijing, Guangzhou, Nairobi, New Delhi, Mexico City, San Salvador, and Guatemala City. The news release calls these operations “cost-effective and high value”: they will continue to “adjudicate complex immigration petitions that require in-person interviews, to enhance integrity through fraud detection and national security activities, and to liaise with U.S. and foreign government entities to improve migration management capacity.” The news release gives no reason for the partial retreat in plans to axe all international offices.
The agency is moving ahead with plans to close the remaining 13 international field offices, beginning with Seoul and Monterrey at the end of Sept. 2019, and completing in Aug. 2020.
July 3 Update: USCIS closed its Ciudad Juarez field office on June 30. The Manila field office will close on July 5.
Apr. 23 Update: BuzzFeed is reporting that “In September, the Monterrey, Mexico, office is projected to close, as well as the station in Seoul, South Korea. By the end of January 2020, the majority of the offices, including those in Mexico City, London, Athens, and Guatemala City, are slated to cease operations. All offices, including the main district offices for the separate regions, are scheduled to close by March 10, 2020.”
Mar. 12 Original Article: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced plans to close its international field offices, according stories by NPR and Reuters, among others.
USCIS currently has more than 20 international field offices, including two in China, at Guangzhou and Beijing. These offices currently handle work such as:
- Forms I-130, Petitions for Alien Relatives, by U.S. citizens on behalf of their spouses, children, and parents
- Forms I-131A, Applications for Travel Documents (Carrier Documentation), by permanent residents whose green card has been stolen, lost, or destroyed.
- Fingerprint collection for naturalization applicants under section 319(b) of the Act, namely, such as spouses of U.S. citizen employees working abroad for American companies or the federal Government.
- Military citizenship applications
- Refugee processing
- Looking for fraud in visa applications and providing technical immigration advice to other U.S. government officials.
The closures are justified by USCIS as a cost-cutting measure and will happen sometime over the next year. In the meantime, all new staff deployments to international offices have been cancelled.
Work previously handled by international field offices would be shifted to U.S.-based USCIS offices and to State Department personnel at U.S. embassies and consulates abroad. Still, it’s not clear which responsibilities would be taken on by the State Department, which says that the two agencies have not yet reached an agreement on such responsibilities.
From a customer’s perspective, USCIS international offices have performed well in comparison with U.S.-based offices. The average processing time for all USCIS cases surged by 46 percent over the past two fiscal years and 91 percent since 2014, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), which sees such delays as an intentional policy to slow U.S. immigration. International offices have not seen such delays.
It’s beyond my paygrade to know whether resources are better spent on adjudicators at domestic or international offices. But I can confidently predict that this is bad news for U.S. citizens residing abroad and their families, and not just because they will face increased processing times. Where the State Department will take over responsibilities for USCIS, State Department employees won’t do the job as well as USCIS staff. I have a high regard for the professionalism of foreign services officers. But these tasks are peripheral, not central, to State’s mission. Already, State employees are performing some of these duties in regions of the world where there is no USCIS international field office, and sometimes these tasks are given short shrift. For example:
- U.S. Embassies and Consulates may not explain clearly to the public the requirements and procedures for filing Forms I-130. A typical example is the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia, which states that they will accept a Form I-130 in “exceptional circumstances,” but doesn’t explain what those circumstances are, how to file, or even which types of petitioners can file on behalf of which types of beneficiaries.
- The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual gives inaccurate instructions to officers about fingerprint collection for naturalization applicants. For instance, they say that they will collect fingerprints in 319(b) cases, only “where compelling extenuating circumstances exist.” In actuality, USCIS imposes no such requirement: 319(b) applicants residing abroad may freely decide whether to be fingerprinted abroad or to return to the U.S. for this purpose.
It’s a shame to see USCIS international offices will get the axe. For U.S. expats, it may be to your advantage to file now with an international office before the date (not yet announced) when they stop accepting filings.
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