Policy Review Survey Report

Introduction

In April, USCIS launched a comprehensive effort to review all of its adjudication and customer service policies.  USCIS invited the workforce and external stakeholders to complete a survey identifying their priorities for the Policy Review. This is the beginning of a long-term effort to ensure our policies reflect our fundamental mission and core values of consistency, integrity, transparency and efficiency.

First 10 Areas Under Review

• Guided by nearly 5,600 survey responses from stakeholders, the initial issue priorities of the USCIS Policy Review will be:
• National Customer Service Center
• Nonimmigrant H-1B (specialty occupations)
• Naturalization
• Employment-Based Adjustment of Status
• Family-Based Adjustment of Status
• Employment-Based Immigrants Preference Categories 1, 2 (priority workers, professionals and holders of advanced degrees) and 3 (skilled workers and professionals)
• Refugee and Asylum Adjustment of Status
• Form I-601 (Application for Waiver of Ground of Inadmissibility)
• General Humanitarian Programs
• Employment Authorization and Travel Documents

To develop the list, USCIS considered its operational and programmatic needs as well as a desire to represent the diversity of issue areas. 

We will convene working groups to review each of the issue areas. Leaders from across USCIS will join analysts, adjudicators and customer service representatives in examining policy and instructional documents that guide our work. USCIS will follow the federal rulemaking process whenever appropriate, and once approved, new policies will be available electronically. 

Survey Results

• External Stakeholder Survey Data (in PDF)
• External Stakeholder Survey Summary Graphs & Tables (in MS Excel)

5,553 external stakeholders participated in the survey. Respondents were able to select N/A or choose not to answer a question, which is considered a null value.  Null values were excluded on the following tables and charts. Percentages were rounded to the nearest whole number.