Michael Aytes, acting deputy director for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), says that because of USCIS regulations, USCIS is “unable to accept an application and begin the adjudication process in advance of visa availability.” As a result, they are unable to “limit the number of applications accepted in a given month to the actual number of visas available.” (0:41)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca.), chair of the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugee, Border Security, and International Law, says that the “backlog of people waiting to immigrate legally to the United States grows larger” while the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) and the Department of State (DOS) “regularly fail to issue the legally authorized number of immigrant visas each year.” (0:33)
The Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugee, Border Security, and International Law held a hearing today on “ Wasted Visas, Growing Backlogs.” Chair Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca.) said the goal of the hearing was to “examine the consistent failure by our immigration agencies to issue all the family- and employment-based immigrant visas authorized by law each year, despite the ongoing demand for such visas.” With Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.), former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, she has developed legislation to recapture unused visas and to allow the visas to be used in the future.
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