USA Green Card Immigration Blog

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is a bureau of United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS.) Its main responsibilities are promoting national security, eliminating backlogs in immigration cases, and improving customer care services. As part of its responsibilities, USCIS handles all forms and processing materials related to immigration and naturalization.

A Notice of Entry of Appearance as Attorney or Accredited Representative, popularly known as the USCIS G-28 Form, is a standard form that notifies USCIS that you will be represented by an attorney or anyone else belonging to a religious, charitable, social service or similar organization before it. All the notifications will be sent to him from then on and whenever he files papers for you, a Notice of Appearance (NOA) must be submitted. You can change your attorney anytime by filing a new USCIS G-28 Form.

USCIS has recently announced the publication of a revised USCIS Immigration Form, which can be downloaded online by U.S. Immigration Support members with a current subscription. A grace period of 30 days has been granted. This means that, till October 30 Forms G-28 that are in the mail currently will be considered valid when received at the USCIS lockbox facility or the USCIS center. After this date any prior versions of the form received will be considered invalid. Forms filed before October 30 will be honored for previously filed cases if the forms were properly completed by an eligible attorney.

Applicants must ensure that they submit the correct form because if an incorrect form is submitted the application may be denied and not processed. So read through the immigration guide that best suits your case, containing filling instructions and the procedures before you start filling the form.

USCIS G-28 Form is included in application guides such as Green card renewal, Green card replacement and in Green card updates.

President Barrack Obama had initiated an immigration policy to legalize an estimated 12 million of USA’s illegal immigrants earlier this year. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS,) the federal agency that supervises immigration issues and grants visas, is getting ready to deal with the enormous increase in applications once this immigration policy becomes a law.

Even though the official estimate of the number of illegal immigrants who will apply for legal documents is not available, two research groups based in Washington, namely the Pew Hispanic Center and the Center for Immigration Studies, estimate that a minimum of 10.8 million illegal immigrants live in the country.

Alejandro Mayorkas, who took over as the director of USCIS in August this year, says that USCIS is equipped to process only around 6 million USA immigration applications a year. But, once President Obama’s immigration policy is passed, it may have to process that many USA immigration applications in just a few weeks. The processing of applications also involves tedious steps, such as collection of fingerprints and other biometric identity information.

USCIS is gearing up to cope up with the tremendous increase in the visa applications under Obama’s comprehensive immigration reform plan. Several measures are being implemented by the agency director Alejandro Mayorkas to process the applications faster. For instance, the agency is planning to use lockboxes to receive applications instead of local offices.

Allowing illegal immigrants to use a simple mail-in registration to set the legalization process in motion is another step that is to be taken.

The agency is also exploring ways to reduce backlogs and delays to ensure a better performance. Further, Mr. Mayorkas, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and other officials have also been holding meetings across the United States to garner ideas from the public on how to deal with the situation.