Immigration Services is taking steps to reduce its backlogs in processing applications.  The agency has established new internal cycle time goals. These goals are internal metrics that will guide the backlog reduction efforts. As these internal cycle times improve, processing times will follow. In the end, we hope applicants and petitioners will receive decisions on their cases more quickly. To accomplish these goals, USCIS will increase capacity, improve technology, and expand staffing.

When we provide our clients with estimates on how long a case might take, we base that on our own experience and also refer the government’s latest published processing times. Internally, the agency uses cycle times to see how long it takes to process a case. The table below shows their new cycle time goals. If the agency were to meet these goals it would dramatically speed up the processing times we currently see for many case types. Hopefully, we start to see the agency’s goals become a processing time reality for our clients!