USCIS Releases Long-Term Plan to Boost Workforce, Strengthen Immigration System
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is on the frontlines of administering the nation’s immigration and naturalization system. The agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), recently released its long-term strategic plan with the objective of allowing the agency’s workforce to “better strengthen its capabilities and help the country reach its highest ideals.”
The USCIS FY 2023-2026 Strategic Plan highlights three long-term goals:
Strengthen the U.S. Immigration System
Invest in the Agency Workforce
Promote Effective and Efficient Management and Stewardship
“Our new strategic plan will be our roadmap to realize our own promise as an agency of transparency and responsiveness – an agency that upholds the legal immigration system, supports, and engages its employees, and fosters collaboration to deliver high-quality results,” said USCIS Director Ur Jaddou.
The plan builds on Director Jaddou’s five priorities announced in 2022.
Strengthening the U.S. Immigration System
The first goal of the new strategic plan is to improve the U.S. immigration system by expanding legal pathways, improving access to benefits, and ensuring that strategies, processes, and communications support a strong legal immigration system with integrity.
Goals include:
Cutting wait times for decisions on applications, petitions, and requests while promoting quality adjudications.
Increasing capacity to handle refugee, asylum, temporary protected status, and humanitarian parole applications.
Reducing undue barriers to the legal immigration system.
Enhancing the ability to identify threats to national security and public safety and to deter immigration fraud.
Investing in the USCIS Workforce
The second goal is to improve and invest in the USCIS Workforce.
The plan calls for the agency to attract, recruit, train, and retain a “diverse and resilient workforce that drives high-quality organizational performance” and to focus on filling high-priority jobs.
Goals include:
Promoting a culture that values diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA).
Identifying efficiencies to attract new employees and encourage high-performing employees.
Implementing a workforce engagement plan.
Promoting Effective Management and Stewardship
The third goal is to promote effective management and stewardship.
“Strengthening USCIS’ fiscal health and management will ensure that the agency has the resources to responsibly manage its existing workload and execute key priorities,” said the report.
Goals include:
Implementing a multi-year budget aligned with strategic goals.
Enhancing and streamlining services for recruiting and hiring.
Improving data and IT management.
Establishing protocols to measure a program’s effectiveness.
“This plan is grounded in USCIS’ longstanding mission and firm commitment to making the United States a stronger, more inclusive, and welcoming nation, and preserving the integrity of the U.S. immigration programs we administer,” said Director Jaddou.