Processing Time Report Update

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by all the nonsense and potential disaster available to write about. USCIS may or may not be about to start staff furloughs next month as the agency, administration, House, and Senate busily blame each other over funding, no two lawyers seem to agree on if/when/how an incoherent executive order may or may not devastate Hong Kong immigration, consulates keep stalling on interviews even when pandemic control justifies opening (Vietnam being a striking example), Administrative Appeals Office decisions make me weep, and USCIS just redesigned its website to break my links and make everything harder to find. But as the industry’s official Ms. Processing Times, I’ll at least attempt to shed light and sense on one issue: the latest processing times report.

Despite the report, USCIS is certainly not currently occupied in processing I-526 filed 46 to 74.5 months ago.

I’ve tried to give the USCIS processing times page credit for reporting consistent with a methodology, even if that methodology is confusing and unhelpful. But with the latest report update, I can only conclude that the report has lost its moorings.  Here’s the latest update for I-526 processing times.

USCIS will be happy if people look at this report and think “Oh I guess a petition filed two years ago is not unreasonably delayed after all. I guess it’s too early to make inquiries to IPO customer service or Congressional representatives or to sue USCIS with a mandamus action, now that the report defines 46 to 74.5 months as normal processing for I-526.” This conclusion is very convenient for USCIS. They’re being flooded with inquiries and litigation over delayed processing, and need people to believe that they’re bogged down in cases from four to six years ago, and thus innocently unable to process two-year-old cases. Unluckily for USCIS, we in the community have records that show that the report cannot be true.

First, consider the “case inquiry date” in May 2014. If you believe the current report, an I-526 is not “outside normal” processing unless it was filed more than six years ago. We have two ways to put that claim in context and find it senseless.

• According to USCIS form processing data, there were approximately 10,000 I-526 pending in May 2014, and over 48,000 I-526 have been adjudicated since May 2014. By the numbers, I-526 processing has passed 2014 and earlier petitions by tens of thousands. So how could any I-526 from 2014 be left on file? If by chance there were any recent adjudications on petitions somehow left tens of thousands of places behind, that’s clearly nothing to do with “normal processing.”
• According to past USCIS processing times reports (which I have logged at least monthly since 2014), the most recent time USCIS reported it was working on May 2014 I-526 petitions was five years ago, in June 2015. (Note the reports before 2018 are in a separate tab in the Excel log referenced.)  Even when the case inquiry date started to look inflated in 2018, it never went back to 2014. And now, in July 2020, USCIS wants us to believe that it has suddenly returned to processing the inventory of petitions that it previously reported processing five years ago? And even if our memories didn’t go back to 2015, but only extended to last month – doesn’t USCIS think we’ll be suspicious when the boundary for “normal processing” was placed at 44.5 months in June 2020, and suddenly moved back to 74.5 months in July 2020? The reports are simply not plausible, when considered as a pattern.

The same reference sources can be applied as context to the lower end of the reported “estimated time range,” which supposedly represents the median of processing times in recent adjudications.

• According to USCIS form processing data, there were 20,804 I-526 pending 46 months ago, in September 2016. USCIS data further shows that over 33,000 I-526 have been adjudicated since September 2016. 21,000 – 33,000 = <0.  So zero is approximately how many I-526 petitions could possibly be still left from 46 months ago and earlier, if there’s been any kind of order to I-526 processing.
• Processing is rather disordered, and as of October 2018 USCIS reported 2,021 outlier I-526 left from before September 2016. Of those, 917 were Chinese that would now be excluded from adjudication by the visa availability approach. None of those oldest 2,000 oldest petitions should be left today considering that USCIS reported processing over 6,000 I-526 since October 2018. Certainly, there can’t be enough left to occupy 50% of IPO’s I-526 processing capacity, as the USCIS processing times report is now trying to suggest.
• The pattern of USCIS processing times reports also undermines any appearance of sense for the lower end of the “estimated time range.” June 2018 was the most recent time that USCIS reported September 2016 as marking the median of recent I-526 adjudications. Since mid 2018, the processing times report has indicated that USCIS has slowly been working through I-526 filings from 2017 into 2018. Until yesterday, the lower end of the estimated time range put the I-526 median in early 2018. I believed that, because anecdotally I’m seeing a lot of I-526 approvals on early 2018 cases. I cannot believe today’s processing times report when it suddenly pushes the lower end of the estimated time range back to where it was reported to be two years ago.

Clearly, the USCIS processing times report can’t be reporting based on the methodology that it claims to use: giving the median and 93^rd percentile for processing times of actual I-526 recently adjudicated. Realizing that, people have been trying to guess at an unstated methodology. Although the report states that it’s backward-looking, reporting historical data and not predicting future processing times, some people guess that the report has secretly been changed to be a predictor of future wait times in expectation of possible mass USCIS staff furloughs. Although the report states that it has not been updated to reflect the visa availability approach (with an alert promising that “in the future, we will update”), some people guess that the mysterious current report can be explained as an unannounced reflection on country-specific treatment under the visa availability approach. Although the report states that it’s objectively indexed to what was actually happening with processing about two months ago, I guess that USCIS has started just making up numbers to protect themselves against lawsuits. All we know for sure, considering the references cited above, is that the report is inconsistent with its nominal methodology. Any guesses about an unstated methodology are potentially correct, but unsure in absence of statement. Either way, it’s impossible to draw conclusions about reality from the current processing times report. For I-526, I rather credit inventory data, anecdotal evidence, and previous processing times reports that suggest USCIS has progressed to processing I-526 filed in early 2018. (And some more recent, as people such as medical professionals battling COVID-19 and residents of countries wracked by civil unrest successfully request expedited treatment, while others succeed in Mandamus even for recent dates by pointing out that all of 2019 was an administrative delay.)

My hypothesis that the USCIS processing times report has become a lever to influence community beliefs and behavior, not a report of facts, is bolstered by the I-924 time report. Year to date, USCIS has reported the I-924 processing time range at 4 to 8 years. Suddenly this week, USCIS changed that to 1 to 3 years. That makes sense as a decision to stop discouraging demand for IPO’s highest-revenue form. The report pattern is tough to explain otherwise.

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