Thursday, September 01, 2011

Fast Track Waiver Program Stays in Mexico

The US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico receives 20,000 waiver filings (for unlawful presence, misrepresentation, prostitution, and criminal grounds) a year, with two full time workers assigned t the waivers. They have the only waiver system in the wqorld that is two-tracked. A case can be "instantly approved" within 3 weeks, on average, if the officer believes that the case is strong enough or there are no complications with arrest records, or other unresolved issues that need more attention. The cases that are not in these instantly approved batch, head to the backlog, which has taken as long as 16 months for a decision, an incredibly long time for an immigrant to wait abroad for a decision. CIS recently announced that CDJ CIS's fast track program is being considered for all waiver submissions when CIS brings all waiver filings to a lockbox set in the U.S. scheduled to be set up for next year. Right now, no other CIS office outside the US has this fast track program and CIS is making no plans to add the fast track to any of those offices as none have the volume of cases that CDJ has.