NSC Working on Reducing I-140 Processing Times
Posted Aug 05, 2000

The Nebraska Service Center (NSC) of INS has been working steadily to reduce processing times for the Form I-140 (the employment-based immigrant visa petition). NSC announced that it has engaged in a systematic effort to reduce backlogs, working through one category at a time. By now, substantial progress has been made in processing times for EB1, EB2 (labor certification based) and EB3 cases, and the last category tackled has been the National Interest Waiver type of EB2.

In a liaison teleconference held in July 2000 with representatives of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), NSC officials reported that by the end of July 2000 their goal was to process all I-140s in about 4 to 5 months from the date on the receipt notice. It takes a few weeks from the time the package arrives to the time the receipt is issued, 90 days from receipt issuance until the petition reaches an examiner, and another month or more until a decision is made, so the time translates to about 6 months overall. Considering that most cases were taking at least a year to process, the new time frame is certainly an improvement.

However, please note that these timeframes currently apply only to cases filed after February 2000. At the AILA Annual Conference in Chicago in June 2000 that Attorney Murthy attended and participated in with several attorneys at our firm, NSC officials stated that a team of six experts was being assigned to tackle the backlogs. So far those team efforts have concentrated on cases filed subsequent to February 2000. Many older I-140s are still pending, including some that have been at NSC for at least one year! We at The Law Office of Sheela Murthy, P.C. sincerely hope that NSC can shortly clear the older cases as well.