Immigration Application Fees

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA) established the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CIS is responsible for several functions transferred from the former Immigration Services Division of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) under the Department of Justice. CIS's functions include adjudicating and processing applications for U.S. citizenship and naturalization, administering work authorizations and other petitions, and providing services for new residents and citizens. CIS collects fees from applicants to process the various immigrationrelated applications and petitions. CIS also receives appropriated funds to pay for administrative and overhead costs such as records management and backlog reduction. HSA requires that we report on whether CIS is likely to derive sufficient funds from fees to carry out its functions in the absence of appropriated funds.

We determined that fees were not sufficient to fully fund CIS's operations. In part, this has resulted because (1) the current fee schedule is based on an outdated fee study that did not include all costs of CIS's operations and (2) costs have increased since that study was completed due to an additional processing requirement and other actions. While it is clear fees are insufficient to fully fund CIS's operations, there is insufficient cost data to determine the full extent of the shortfall. A fundamental problem is that CIS does not have a system to track the status of each application as it moves through the process. Accordingly, CIS does not have information on the extent to which work on applications in process remains to be finished. In addition, CIS does not know the current cost of each step to process each application. The effect is that CIS knows neither the cost to process new applications nor the cost to complete pending applications. Further, because DHS is still determining how administrative and overhead functions will be carried out and the related costs allocated, CIS does not know what future administrative and overhead costs will be. For the 3-year period from fiscal year 2001 through 2003, CIS's reported operating costs exceeded available fees by almost $460 million, thus creating the need for appropriated funds. CIS projects that this situation will remain in fiscal year 2004. Since the beginning of fiscal year 2001, the number of pending applications increased by more than 2.3 million (about 59 percent) to about 6.2 million at the end of fiscal year 2003. This increase occurred despite additional appropriations beginning in fiscal year 2002 of $80 million annually to address the backlog. In addition, CIS has not performed an analysis of the steps needed to reduce processing times to the 6-month average goal established in the President's backlog initiative. These times increased significantly in fiscal year 2003 to levels well above the 6-month target established in CIS's March 2002 Backlog Elimination Plan. Absent actions to increase fees, reduce processing costs and times, or both, as well as to improve the timeliness and completeness of fee schedule updates, CIS will continue to need appropriated funds to avoid even greater increases in the backlog of pending applications. The full costs of CIS's operations cannot be determined until analyses of the costs to process incoming and pending applications and administrative and overhead costs are completed.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: