USCIS recently announced that it will approve adjustment of status cases that have been pending more than six months if the delay in adjudication is because of name checks. Adjustment applicants with expired fingerprints (quite a concept, expired fingerprints) will need to be re-fingerprinted and then their cases approved. In a memo dated February 4, 2008, USCIS warns that the name check will still be completed, and if it turns out the new permanent resident is actually a bad guy, then the government will move to rescind permanent residence. I should hope so, but inasmuch as there is no publicly known case of the name check ever finding a bad guy and inasmuch as ICE, EOIR (immigration courts), CBP, and the Department of State have never relied on name checks as an adjudicatory screen, no one should fear that this new policy is a surrender to the terrorists. This new policy is of little aid to naturalization applicants who must still wait for name check completion– but there is hope that this announcement will free up resources to resolve naturalization cases or that this is the harbinger of changes to come. Here is the Name check memo.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 3:23 am and is filed under General . You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments Feed feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.