Effective May 28, 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (”DHS”) began collecting biometric digital fingerprints from non-U.S. citizens departing the U.S. We wrote last April about the possibility of exit fingerprinting and it seems that DHS is underway to test the system and to implement it throughout other points of departure from the U.S. within [...]
The Washington Post has a nice expose of a new source of delays for the naturalization proceedings for thousands of legal permanent residents. The Post article quotes the report by the USCIS Ombudsman, dated December 16, 2008, which finds that while USCIS naturalized more than 1,000,000 new citizens in Fiscal Year 2008 and while there [...]
The USCIS has released an update to the projected processing times for naturalization petitions. Based on updated projections, USCIS estimates that the naturalization process would take an average of 10-12 months by the end of September 2008 (compared with the estimated 16-18 months projections announced last year). The increase in processing time was mainly due to [...]