Using one of the more bizarre excuses for not processing cases in a timely manner, the INS in Newark, New Jersey has announced that the files of more than 425,000 are trapped in the top-floor offices of the INS' headquarters office there. Why? On April 20th, a crew repairing the roof of the building found asbestos insulation and the building manager ordered workers on the affected floor to vacate their offices. Those workers were located elsewhere in the building, but no one has had access to those files since then.

Numerous applications including naturalization petitions, work authorization applications and many other types of applications were all left in haste.

INS spokeswoman Lynn Durko told the public, "Your immigrant visa could be in there, immigrant photos, records. There could be criminal records in there." She went on to say that the INS "is a victim in this, as well."

The closure is expected to continue until at least December. The INS does expect to have access to some of the files by November.

The question is now what will the INS be doing to help people suffering as a result of the closure? Critics are complaining that the INS is not informing people whether their cases are affected. Durko states that it would not be practical to notify all of the affected people. It would be incredibly time consuming and the INS is not even sure which people are affected.

One thing is clear. Newark applicants can plan on adding many months to their processing and should be conscious of this when making their plans.