On November 30, 2007, USCIS, through Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, made some promises about speeding up the name check problem applicants are facing. It promised to put more resources into clearing name checks, or more accurately, paying more to the FBI to speed things up. It is hard to tell if name check clearances have actually sped up since. We will need more statistics to see. The problem for permanent resident applicants went away when USCIS announced on February…