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ExpectMore.govExpectMore.gov home pageEXPECT FEDERAL PROGRAMS TO PERFORM WELL, AND BETTER EVERY YEAR.
 
Program Assessment

Program

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Immigration Services

The purpose of this program is to process, adjudicate, and grant immigrant, non-immigrant, and citizenship benefits to those eligible while ensuring the integrity of the immigration system. Some of these benefits are lawful permanent residency, employment authorization, and refugee status.

Rating

What This Rating Means

PERFORMING
Moderately Effective

In general, a program rated Moderately Effective has set ambitious goals and is well-managed. Moderately Effective programs likely need to improve their efficiency or address other problems in the programs' design or management in order to achieve better results.
  • While this program has decreased the processing time of some immigration applications more work is warranted. In particular, this program needs to more effectively leverage technology to collect, process, and adjudicate immigration applications in a more accurate and timely manner.
  • The program has also demonstrated improvements toward providing the right benefit to the right person. A Fraud Detection and National Security office was established to identify immigration benefit fraud, enhance security checks, and develop a joint anti-fraud strategy in partnership with other Federal agencies.
  • The program has made progress in decreasing the backlog of immigration applications. At the end of 2005, the backlog had fallen by over 2.5 million cases (from a high of 3.8 million in January 2004) and had achieved a six-month or better cycle time in 9 of the 16 applications under the backlog elimination effort.

Improvement Plan

About Improvement Plans

We are taking the following actions to improve the performance of the program:

  • Investing in technology to improve information sharing, eliminate paper-based processing, more effectively respond to changing workload, and automate business operations.
  • Making it easier and faster for customers to electronically file immigration applications, get updates on the status of their applications, and, as appropriate, receive immigration benefits.
  • Making it easier for employers to verify the employment eligibility of employees via a web-based system.

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