The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Ombudsman announced a significant decline in the number of pending FBI name checks for individuals seeking immigration benefits in the United States.

The USCIS Ombudsman had identified FBI name check delays as one of the major hurdles to improved customer service at USCIS in his 2008 and 2007 Annual Reports to Congress.

▪  There were 269,943 name checks pending on May 6, 2008. There are 95,449 pending as of August 12, 2008.

▪  There were 185,162 name checks pending for more than six months on May 6, 2008. There are 61,817 pending more than six months as of August 12, 2008.

▪  USCIS met its April 2, 2008 goal to process all name checks pending more than two years by July 2008. "USCIS and FBI Release Joint Plan to Eliminate Backlog of FBI Name Checks; Partnership Establishes Series of Milestones To Complete Checks."

The Ombudsman also noted that USCIS has updated its projected naturalization processing times in an August 11, 2008 announcement

USCIS now anticipates naturalization application processing will average 10-12 months nationally by the end of September 2008. Previously USCIS estimated that processing naturalization applications would take 16-18 months before reducing the estimate to 14-16 months and later to 13-15 months.