In December 2001 Arthur Anderson & Company issued a 69-page report written for the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) entitled Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) Streamlining Pilot Project Assessment Report. Streamlining permits a single member of the Board to dispose of certain motions, withdrawals of appeal, summary remands and other procedural issues, without opinion, under certain conditions. The Streamlining appellate review procedure was published as a final rule in the Federal Register in the Fall of 1999. The Arthur Anderson report is an evaluation of Streamlinging Phase IV, to review the changes that came as a result of streamlining and to assess the impact on productivity.

In the report, the Streamlinging Pilot Project is declared "an unqualified success," a conclusion resulting from a five-step methodology that included both subjective and objective measurements.

"BIA case productivity both in terms of the number of cases completed and the average number of days it takes for a case to be processed from "Intake" to "Completed at BIA" has been significantly improved by Streamlining."

At the same time, the Anderson report says the expedited process has not been negative for appellants.

"The alien has also not been adversely affected by Streamlining. This is evidenced both in the number of adverse decisions rendered and by not falling disproportionately on 'unrepresented' respondents," the report says.

The report said Streamlining was "anticipated to eliminate the remainder of... eligible pending cases within 20 months," but that the program would remain viable past that period and could be "sustained based solely upon the incoming stream of cases."

In Fiscal Year 2001, the Board completed 35% of its cases by Streamlining, and the report estimated that the streamlining process could complete 825 eligible cases per month plus others, should the statutes and regulations governing the case law change or expand.

Critics of streamlining point out, however, that the quality of the adjudications should be the measure of success and not the quantity. Most decisions are being issued with virtually no consideration and with little information about the basis for the decision. Such critics question whether there is any meaningful appeals process left.

The full report is online at http://www.lexisnexis.com/practicearea/immigration/pdfs/web419.pdf.