USCIS Announces First Ten Areas of Focus for Agency-wide Policy Review
Public Survey Informs Selection
News Release

WASHINGTON— U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced the results of a public survey that launched the USCIS Policy Review, an unprecedented, top-to-bottom examination of the agency’s adjudication and customer-service policies.  The survey results helped USCIS select the first 10 issue areas to address in the agency-wide review.

Informed by the survey responses, the agency’s needs, and input from the workforce, the USCIS Policy Review will begin by examining policies in the following issue areas: National Customer Service Center; Nonimmigrant H-1B; Naturalization and Citizenship; Employment-based Adjustment of Status; Family-based Adjustment of Status; Employment-Based Preference Categories 1, 2 and 3; Refugee and Asylum Adjustment of Status; Form I-601; General Humanitarian; and Employment Authorization and Travel Documents. 
 
“As an agency, we must achieve consistency in the policies that guide us and in how we implement them for the public benefit,” said USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas.  “To achieve that critical goal, we are partnering with the public in this major undertaking to review our adjudication and customer-service policies.  We will work collaboratively toward the shared objectives of consistency, integrity, transparency and efficiency.”

In April 2010, USCIS issued a survey that asked any interested member of the public, as well as its own workforce, to help identify the issue areas that the agency should examine first.  USCIS received approximately 5,600 survey responses from diverse stakeholders. Those results are now available, along with a summary developed by USCIS’s new Office of Performance and Quality.

USCIS is now establishing internal working groups to focus on each of the 10 issue areas.  The working groups will include USCIS adjudicators, policy analysts, attorneys, customer-service representatives and other experts from within the agency.  Throughout the Policy Review, USCIS will continue to engage with the public and seek its feedback to ensure that the resulting policies are informed, responsive and effective.

For more information on USCIS and its programs, visit www.uscis.gov.