The fees received by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are not sufficient to fully fund its operations, according to a GAO report released this week.  However, the report was unable to determine the exact amount of the shortfall due to insufficient data. This was due to the USCIS being unable to put a cost on each step in the processing of an application.

From 2001 through 2003, USCIS exceeded its available funds for operating costs by almost $460 million, which created the need for appropriated funds.  In addition, the number of pending applications increased by more than 2.3 million to about 6.2 million between Fiscal Year 2001 and 2003.  The increase continued even with an additional $80 million annually in appropriations in FY 2002 to address the backlog. 

The GAO report stated that USCIS would continue to need appropriated funds to prevent a greater number of applications from entering the backlog.  The funds would have to be provided if certain other actions were unable to be met, including increased fees, reduced processing times, and improvement of the timeliness and completeness of fee schedule updates.  However, analysis of the cost to process income and pending applications, as well as administrative and overhead costs, must be done before the full cost of USCIS’s operations can be determined.

The GAO recommended that the Director of USCIS conduct an analysis of the current processing functions to determine steps needed to reduce the processing time to an average of six months or less, to fall within the goals of the 6-month average goal established by the President’s backlog initiative.  In order to determine the cost of processing new and pending applications, the GAO recommended that the USCIS Director perform a comprehensive fee study to determine the costs to process new immigration applications and determine the costs to eliminate the backlog of pending applications.

In addition, the GAO recommended that the DHS Deputy Secretary identify which support services and functions, such as shared services, modernizing and supporting shared databases, shared infrastructure, and other forms of support, and the cost of those functions should be transferred or allocated to USCIS.  As for fee schedule updates, the USCIS Director should determine ways to improve the agency's timeliness in implementing fee updates.