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USCIS & FBI Release Joint Plan to Eliminate Backlog of FBI Name Checks;
Partnership Establishes Series of Milestones to Complete Checks
Washington, April 2, 2008 - U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) today announced a joint plan to eliminate
the backlog of name checks pending with the FBI.
USCIS and
the FBI established a series of milestones prioritizing
work based on the age of the pending name check. The FBI
has already
eliminated all name check cases pending more than four
years.
"This plan of action is the product of a strong partnership
between USCIS and the FBI to eliminate the backlogs and to
strengthen national security," said
USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez.
By increasing staff, expanding resources,
and applying new business processes, the goal is to complete
98 percent of all name
checks within 30 days. USCIS and the FBI intend to resolve the remaining
two percent, which represent the most difficult name checks
and require additional
time to complete, within 90 days or less. The goal is to achieve and sustain
these processing times by June 2009.
The joint plan will focus on resolving
the oldest pending FBI name checks first. USCIS has also
requested that the FBI prioritize
resolution of approximately
29,800 pending name checks from naturalization applicants submitted to
the FBI before May 2006 where the naturalization applicant
was
already interviewed.
The target milestones for processing
name checks are:
Completion Goal |
Category |
May 2008 |
Process all name checks pending more than three years |
July 2008 |
Process all name checks pending more than two years |
Nov. 2008 |
Process all name checks pending more than one year
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Feb. 2009 |
Process all name checks pending more than 180 days |
June 2009 |
Process
98 percent of all name checks within 30 days and process
the
remaining two percent within 90 days. |
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