On June 15, 2022, the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CIS Ombudsman) submitted a formal recommendation to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) about how to address its chronic funding problems. This recommendation analyzes the challenges posed by USCIS’ current fee-setting structure and presents options for how it could seek legislative or regulatory action to place the agency on more sustainable financial footing.

The Issue

To raise filing fees, USCIS must engage in a lengthy, resource-heavy process that can take years. By the time USCIS issues a final fee rule, the data it relied on is already outdated, leaving the agency chronically underfunded and understaffed. Other challenges USCIS faces in ensuring adequate funding include the lack of predictable funding for its extensive humanitarian efforts, the cost of addressing its backlog, and events outside of USCIS’ control that impact its work and finances.

Our Recommendation

The CIS Ombudsman analyzes USCIS’ current funding model and presents five recommendations to the agency for expanding or modifying its funding sources:

1. Reengineer the agency’s biennial fee review process, particularly its associated staffing allocation models, to ensure it fully and proactively projects the staffing levels needed to meet targeted processing time goals for future processing as well as backlog adjudications.
2. Cover the cost of delivering humanitarian-based immigration benefits (including but not limited to USCIS’ refugee and asylum programs) through congressional appropriations.
3. Authorize and establish a financing mechanism, through the auspices of the Department of the Treasury, that USCIS may draw upon to address unexpected revenue shortfalls and unfunded policy shifts and to maintain adequate staffing to meet its performance obligations to its customers and Congress.
4. Obtain annual appropriations specifically dedicated to eliminating backlogs.
5. Resume exercising its existing authority to adjust fees annually based on the salary/inflation factor calculated by the Office of Management and Budget under Circular A-76.

More Information

Visit our Recommendations page to see our previously issued recommendations.

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