On January 30, 2019, The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) issued a report which analyzed USCIS data on processing times from FY 2014 to FY 2018. The report finds that overall average case processing times have increased by 91% since FY 2014 and 46% over the last two fiscal years. Additionally, despite an only 4% increase in receipted cases between FY 2016 and FY 2017, USCIS held more than twice the number of delayed cases, still pending beyond normal processing times, at the end of FY 2017 as was held at the end of FY 2016.
AILA attributes these delays largely to Trump Administration’s Policy changes, pointing to an April 2018 report by DHS provided to Congress which acknowledged that policy shifts are a contributing factor in USCIS’s diminished per hour case completion rate, the fact that the number of delayed cases doubled from FY 2016 to FY 2017, and the fact that there is no evidence of a significant decrease in overall USCIS personnel over this time period.