CSC Instructs Not to Withdraw Previously Filed Cases
Posted May 21, 2004

As we reported earlier, the California Service Center (CSC) has started a pilot program for processing I-140/I-485 cases. See our April 9, 2004 MurthyBulletin article, CSC Pilot Program on Concurrent Adjudication, available on MurthyDotCom. The program seeks to adjudicate all concurrently filed I-140/I-485 cases within 90 days of filing. The program was to start with labor certification-based EB2 cases. As a reaction to this, some people apparently have been withdrawing and refiling cases in an attempt to have them "fit" within the pilot program. The CSC issued an announcement in mid-May 2004 requesting that this practice cease, as it is counterproductive to the backlog reduction efforts.

The CSC announcement clarified that any withdrawn and refiled cases will be regarded as outside the pilot project. The same treatment will be given to nonconcurrent (solo) I-140 filings. As we had reported, these may experience delays in processing as efforts focus on the concurrent filings. It is not possible, however, to get a case into the pilot program by withdrawing it and refiling it as part of a concurrent I-140/I-485 case. Such refiled cases will be regarded as outside of the pilot program.

It appears to be too early to gauge the impact of the CSC pilot program. Our Office has just started seeing a few cases that seem to have benefited from the expedited processing times. We will continue to monitor our I-485 cases to see if there are any improvements or trends with respect to processing timeframes.