I suspect that the amount of background legwork for each application is fairly limited. It should be possible to triage the vast majority of applications in a matter of days at most, at least the denials. It's wild that it takes years to do this.
The really long waits aren't processing backlogs they are quota backlogs, either global (because the total annual cap in a category is or was recently lower than the annual nuber of applicants, so there it takes a period of years for quota space to be available globally) or on a per-country basis (because in each category, only 7% of the annual quota can go to applicants from one country, regardless of the distribution of applications.)
Though the processing times are also ridiculously and inexcusably long, in most categories.
Considering that there are over 2M immigrants per year and the USCIS staff is about 20K, it's actually pretty quick. If all USCIS did was just immigration it would still be ~100 immigrants per year per employee or about 2 workdays per immigrant. Even considering that some of those are dependents on the same case, it's still pretty fast. But USCIS also handles all the non-immigrant stuff: CoS, AoS, asylums, etc so they don't dedicate their whole workforce to the immigration and the actual caseload is higher than this estimate.
You've clearly never seen someone go for citizenship. It's a relatively involved process that involves multiple interviews, character reference letters, lots of paperwork, etc.
Getting a greencard (or equivalent) is an entirely different thing and is even _more_ broken.
I've known several people who've done it. I wasn't trying to argue that there isn't a lot of manual labor going on. But I'm doubting how much of that labor extends beyond interfacing with the applicant.
Are they interviewing references outside the country? Doing deep background checks that are not basically instant electronically? That's what I'm talking about. The denial process can probably be made extremely fast, and then the tedious interview part can be focused only on the ones we are planning to accept otherwise.
You're probably right that the background checks aren't that intensive, but every other part of that process is. If needing 2+ interviewers for 15-30 minutes per candidate isn't labor intensive, I don't know what your definition is.
No its not. It's a 3-step process with only one in person interview involved. I've helped 2 people go through that process in the last 2 years.
1) Submit an application and fee. Along with additional documentation (if any). Then wait for biometrics appointment notification.
2) Go to appointed date for biometrics. (Finger printing, photos). Takes about 30 minutes. No different than appointment for TSA Pre-check or Global entry.
3) Go for naturalization interview. If accepted, then usually interviewer will let the person know that they've been approved for naturalization. They'll receive an email/letter indicating date , time and location of the naturalization ceremony/oath.
Of course, depending on the area of the country you live in , the time between the above 3 steps varies. From 90 days to upwards of a year or more. Also, the above is for most people. But there could be some complicated cases where a person has to make multiple in-person visits. But regarding interview, there is only one.
