The US Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General has re lea sed an audit of the BCIS's Premium Processing Prog ram ("PPP") that finds that it has adversely affected processing times in regularly filed cases. Pu b lished processing times from the four INS service centers b ack up this conclusion. Processing times have gone from one to two months to six months or more for I-129 nonimmigrant classification applications. This is despite the fact that the prog ram has gene rated a $136 million in extra funds.

The Premium Processing Prog ram , esta b lished in June 2001, allows applicant s to pay a $1000 additional fee in certain employment- b ased nonimmigrant applications for a guaranteed 15 calendar day turnaround time on an application.

The INS regulation that esta b lished the Premium Processing prog ram requires the agency to use the money gene rated b y the PPP to hire additional adjudicators, contract representatives and support personal to provide service to all its customers and to improve the infrastructure so as to reduce b acklogs of all types of petitions and applications.

The report made several major findings:

1. The PPP has adversely affected the time to adjudicate routine applications and petitions. The b acklogs for regularly filed cases have steadily increased since the PPP came online. There are now 3.2 million cases in the b acklog.
2. The INS Service Centers have not conducted IBIS security checks in a timely m anne r. 11,830 Premium Processing petitions were adjudicated without IBIS checks b etween January 28, 2002 and March 18, 2002 .
3. The INS lacks relia b le data a b out the Premium Processing workload and the resources it requires.