Playing the waiting game in immigration court

Anyone who's had experience with immigration court knows that the process is anything but fast. Nationwide, the backlog has reached an all-time high of 344,230 people in immigration proceedings. See TRAC Immigration for more.

Fortunately, the immigration court doesn't require you
to stand in line the entire time you're waiting for your case.
Used under Creative Commons license from @eschipul

As of September 13, Massachusetts is among the top ten states with the biggest backlog of immigration cases waiting to be processed. It also has the 8th longest wait times. In 2013, a person in deportation proceedings in Massachusetts had to wait an average of 610 days to have the case resolved, above the national average of 562 days. Click here to see some charts. Nebraska had the longest wait times with 761 days, while Hawaii is the shortest at 164.

While the wait times may seem to be a good thing for people who want to avoid deportation, the long delays mean months of uncertainty for people in immigration proceedings.

How to Read a USCIS Processing Time Report

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) publishes a monthly report on processing times at its service centers.  The Service Centers may vary according to which type of application you are submitting.  In New England, a variety of applications are processed at the Vermont Service Center, which released a new Time Report on April 3 with processing dates as of 2/28/13. 

So, how do you read a Time Report?  There are four columns:  “Form,” “Title of Form,” “Classification or Basis for Filing,” and “Processing Timeframe.”  Make sure you have the right form number and classification.  The processing dates represent the receipt dates of petitions and applications currently being processed by the Service Center.  If a certain type of application is being completed within USCIS target timeframes, the timeframe of days, weeks, or months will be shown.  If a USCIS service center doesn't meet the target timeframe, a date will be shown (January 1, 2009) to indicate what cases they are currently processing. 

For example, USCIS set a goal to complete an I-765 Employment Authorizations for Asylum Seekers within 3 weeks, and the service center is meeting this goal, so the processing report shows “3 weeks.”  Notice that the processing times may vary greatly for the same form, but a different classification.  For example, the processing time for an I-765 for someone who has a pending adjustment of status application (I-485) is three months.

For an example where USCIS is not meeting its processing goal, look at the processing time for an I-130 Petition for a U.S. citizen filing for a spouse, parent, or child under 21.  In the column for “Processing Timeframe,” the date listed is “August 6, 2012,” which means that USCIS is processing applications received on August 6, 2012.