The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has requested $1.7 billion in the Fiscal Year 2005 budget.  USCIS requested $140 million for discretionary funding and $1.57 billion in mandatory funding. 

The FY 2005 USCIS budget includes $765 million for immigration services, $400 million for nonimmigrant services, $247 for citizenship services, $139 million for asylum/refugee services and $160 million for backlog reduction.

For FY 2004, the USCIS budget was $773 million for immigration services, $403 million for nonimmigrant services, $244 million fir citizenship services, $133 million for asylum/refugee services and $100 million for backlog reduction, totaling $1.6 billion.

The 2005 budget includes a 60% increase in funding in order to reduce the immigration benefits backlog, for which President Bush proposed a goal of six-month processing times by the end of FY 2006. Immigration advocates are skeptical as the six-month turnaround time has been promised by USCIS for many years.