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Overview

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Bureau is currently part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It performs many of the functions formerly carried out by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which was part of the Department of Justice.

The priorities of the USCIS are to promote national security, to eliminate immigration case backlogs, and improve customer services.  One goal of the CIS is to process applications efficiently and effectively. This is handled by approximately 15,000 federal government employees and contractors who work in 250 local and field offices in the U.S. and around the world.

Functions

CIS focuses on two aspects on the immigrant’s journey towards civic integration: becoming permanent resident and the formal naturalization process. A lawful permanent resident is eligible for US citizenship after holding the Permanent Resident Card for at least five continuous years, and restricting travel outside the United States to less than 180 days.

Consequently, the bureau is charged with granting citizenship and lawful permanent residency, administering immigration services and benefits, and making adjudicative decisions at the service centers.  Like its former duties as the INS, the CIS also processes immigrant visa and naturalization petitions, handles asylum claims and refugee applications, issues employment authorization documents (EAD), and adjudicates petitions for nonimmigrant temporary workers.  However, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which includes the Immigration Court and the Board of Immigration Appeals, and which reviews decisions made by USCIS, remains under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice.

Improvement efforts have focused on reducing the applicant backlog, and expanding customer service via the National Customer Service Center (NCSC), Application Support Centers (ASCs), and the Internet.

History

After scandals arose from September 11, 2001, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was regarded as ineffective and in need of alteration.  So on November 25, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act of 2002 into law. This law transferred the functions of the INS to the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration enforcement functions were placed within the Directorate of Border and Transportation Security and the immigration service functions were placed into the separate USCIS.

Terminology

Citizenship - membership in a political community with rights to political participation; a person having such membership is a citizen.

Immigration - implies long-term permanent residence (and often eventual citizenship); seasonal labor migration (typically for periods of less than a year) is often treated as a form of immigration.

Immigration to the United States - after 2000 legal immigrants to the US number about 1,000,000 per year of which about 600,000 are Change of Status immigrants who already are in the U.S.  Currently there are over 35,000,000 legal immigrants in the US.

Refugee - a person who is seeking asylum in a foreign country in order to escape persecution, war, terrorism, extreme poverty, famines, and natural disaster.

Asylumfor refugees - refugees can gain legal status through a process of seeking and receiving asylum, either by being designated a refugee while abroad or by physically entering the United States and requesting asylee status thereafter.

Refugees in the USA - compose about one-tenth of the total annual immigration to the U.S., though some large refugee populations are very prominent; more than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980

Naturalization - an act whereby a person acquires a citizenship different from that person's citizenship at birth; most commonly associated with economic migrants or refugees who have immigrated to a country and resided there as aliens, and who have voluntarily and actively chosen to become citizens of that country after meeting specific requirements

Immigration and Naturalization Service  (INS) - was a part of the US Department of Justice handling legal and illegal immigration and naturalization; it ceased to exist 3/1/2003

Links

Homeland Security Act of 2002, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ296.107.pdf

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, http://www.uscis.gov

United States Immigration Trackers, http://www.trackitt.com/

Department of Homeland Security, http://www.dhs.gov

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, http://www.ice.gov

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, http://www.cbp.gov

Executive Office for Immigration Review, http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/

Immigration Court http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/sibpages/ICadr.htm

Board of Immigration Appeals, http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/biainfo.htm