On December 7th, IIUSA attended the 2017 Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Ombudsman’s Annual Conference in Washington D.C. Among other speakers were Secretary of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Kirstjen Kielsen, USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna, and CIS Ombudsman Julie Kirchner.
It was discussed that the agency will be making a conscious effort to move away from issuing memos that could or should have gone through a normal regulatory process, implementing heightened fraud detection in all immigration categories including a newly created program to monitor social media, and that in general even with increased staffing – a large increase in filings across the board have resulted in slower processing times.
The Ombudsman’s Office, created by Congress in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, assists individuals and employers encountering difficulties with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In addition to our work on individual cases, we also make recommendations to address systemic issues in the delivery of citizenship and immigration services.
Read CIS Ombudsman 2017 Annual Report to Congress here.
