Bureaucracy can mean two things. One meaning is neutral as in, “It requires a large bureaucracy to run something as complex as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).” The other meaning is pejorative, “If it were not for all the bureaucracy, things could get done much cheaper and faster at USCIS.” When bureaucracy is used pejoratively, the usual gripe is that the bureaucratic rules and procedures are not there to streamline functions to make things more efficient, but rather as…

USCIS has a difficult job. It adjudicates immigration benefits. What makes the job difficult? First, the volume and scope of work. America is a large country and there are a lot of foreigners seeking lots of things – temporary visas, permanent residence visas, citizenship, work permits, travel permits, humanitarian entry into the United States, asylum, protections against deportation based on harsh conditions abroad, and on and on. The variety of different laws pertaining to each of these different types of…