USCIS Announces New Agency Mission Statement

Ur M. Jaddou, the Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), recently announced the agency’s new mission statement. The Trump Administration had previously changed the USCIS mission statement to shift the agency’s attention toward enforcement, rather than providing immigration services. This mission statement change by the Biden Administration better realigns the goals of the USCIS to focus on providing services to the immigrant community. The USCIS is supposed to focus on providing services to its customers, while other agencies, like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), are charged with enforcing violations under immigration law.

New Mission Statement

The new mission statement reads as follows: “USCIS upholds America’s promise as a nation of welcome and possibility with fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve.” The phrase “all we serve” originated under the Obama Administration’s customer service ideology, with hopes of expanding the accessibility of immigration benefits for foreign nationals. According to Director Jaddou, “The United States is and will remain a welcoming nation that embraces people from across the world.” Though laudable, recent years have revealed the U.S. to be unwelcoming to those who have contributed to its richness and growth.

Conclusion

Although the new mission statement itself is not a solution to ongoing backlogs and related problems that have plagued the USCIS in recent years, it does set the tone for USCIS adjudicators as to how stakeholders should be treated. The hope is that this revision of the mission will galvanize the USCIS to transform its sagging reputation and focus heavily on the service aspect embodied in its name.

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