FBI clears name-check backlog for US visas

June 23 2009 by Bryan Palmer

US immigration official Michael Aytes

The backlog for the FBI’s process of checking the names of immigrants applying for a US visa against their files, is almost cleared.

The clearance is the result of the FBI’s moves to speed-up the name-check service by hiring more staff, improving training and upgrading its technology.

The FBI handles name checks on around 6-7 million US visa applications each year. It says that the checks on the applicants’ criminal backgrounds and national security risk are undertaken in less than 30 days in most cases, with the remainder completed within 90 days, making the process much quicker for people applying with US immigration.

The backlog peaked at around 350,000 stalled cases in November 2007, with over half of the cases left pending for more than three months, while some were left for over a year.

Michael Aytes from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) says the FBI has made ‘great strides’ in dealing with the backlog issue, greatly reducing the time it takes to apply for a US visa.

He admitted that some of the cases that need further investigation, of which there are 6,000 currently referred to the USCIS, are not included in the FBI figures. However, these are “being looked at; they don't just sit on a shelf," according to the FBI’s assistant director of national security and records verification directorate, Gregory Smith.

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