Invitation Letter

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that, working in close partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the backlog for FBI name checks pending more than six months has been eliminated.  This is the fourth milestone met by the agency as part of its joint plan with the FBI to completely eliminate the backlog of pending name checks.

Just 16 months ago, more than 349,000 name checks were pending; of that, nearly 150,000 had been pending for more than six months.  All USCIS requests pending for six months or more as of February 28, 2009, have now been responded to by the FBI’s National Name Check Program (NNCP).   

In April 2008, USCIS and the FBI established milestones prioritizing work based on the age of the pending name check.  Priorities included processing all name checks pending more than three years by May 2008 (the FBI had already eliminated all cases pending more than four years); those pending more than two years by July 2008; and those pending more than one year by November 2008.   

USCIS and FBI are on schedule to meet the next two goals:  all name checks requests pending longer than 90 days to be completed by May 30, 2009 and, by the end of June 2009, the FBI will complete 98 percent of USCIS name check requests within 30 days and process the remaining two percent within three months.  USCIS and the FBI will continue to focus on sustaining a rigorous and efficient screening of each name check request.

Elimination of the name check backlog is an example of USCIS’ commitment to making timely decisions about immigration applications and petitions, while maintaining the security and integrity of America’s immigration system.