US Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) opened a new lockbox facility in Elgin, Illinois to expand its lockbox capability. On February 1, 2022, Elgin was added as a filing location for residents of certain states filing Form I-751, Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence. The agency plans to move additional filings to the Elgin lockbox in the coming weeks, including Form N-400, Application for Naturalization, and Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative. The transition is expected to be completed by late summer of this year. Additionally, in the fall of 2022, USCIS is planning to move the lockbox facility in Arizona from Phoenix to Tempe.
Read moreReuters: “Fewer family visas approved as Trump toughens vetting of immigrants”
As the Trump administration campaigns against “chain migration”—where US citizens or Green Card holders petition for extended family members to immigrate to the US—approvals of family-based visas have dropped dramatically in the 2017 fiscal year despite no changes to law. Within the first nine months of 2017, the number of I-130 approvals dropped to 406,000, compared to the 530,000 approvals from the same time period in 2016, despite a similar amount of applications, a Reuters review of US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) figures show.
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