Recently, the California Service Center (CSC) has been responding to inquiries on I-485 applications for adjustment of status that have been pending since November 2001. and beyond. Their response to these status inquiries sheds some light on why there has been no advancement in the processing of these cases.

On July 18, 2003, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) announced that due to the sunset (end) of the religious worker category on September 30, 2003, that resources that would normally be devoted to other cases, must be allocated to the religious worker cases. Therefore, the CSC is temporarily directing resources away from I-140 and non-religious worker I-485 applications to concentrate on the religious worker cases.

Until September 30, 2003, CSC warns that there will be delays in responding to inquiries for Forms I-140, concurrently filed I-140s/I-485s and for I-485s filed based on approved I-140 petitions, because of prioritizing of the applications types associated with the sunset. The CSC is requesting that we withhold any inquiries for impacted cases until after the sunset and they promise that they will resume normal adjudication and inquiry processing after September 30, 2003. This means that we can anticipate continued delays at the CSC for these types of cases at least until October. Realistically, this also means that we will continue to see delays beyond October as the CSC tries to work out from under the delayed processing. We will keep you advised as we obtain more information. 

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