Immigration Guidelines

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Immigration basically refers to the movement of people from one country to another. People immigrate due to varied reasons. Some immigrate due to conflicts, some due to poverty and some may voluntarily immigrate and the process on the whole is a very complex issue. Perhaps one needs a lot of courage to move altogether to a new place considering the facts of new culture and norms and also the pressure to earn for a living in a pretty expensive place with meager savings as well. The guidelines are designed to maintain the economic needs and are pillars of a healthy economy.

USCIS,INS :

The USCIS is a major backbone for all the immigration related issues. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration services or the USCIS is a government agency which provides all services pertaining to immigration related issues and has been guiding the people. It is known for its profound services.

The progress of immigration laws has been very uneven during the past years. The laws were created by the independent colonies during the colonial times. Naturalization Act of 1790 made the first attempt to naturalize the foreigners, which later stopped by the Chinese Exclusion Act for the Chinese people from naturalizing and later the Immigration Act of 1924, straightened out the number of people (immigrants) to be permitted depending on the nationality. The Immigration and Naturalization Services, INS was created by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

Initially the process was carried on by five departments of the federal government which are the Department of State, Department of Labor, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services. Later the immigration INS took the place of Department of Homeland Security, which enforces the immigration laws and guides the foreigners. This is again subdivided into three different departments, the USCIS, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. This transition took place in the year 2003 due to the scandals in the year 2001. All functions of the INS was taken over by the Department of Home land Security, DHS due to the ineffectiveness of the INS. The ICE functions took over the US immigration and Customs Enforcement and the USCIS took over all the immigration related service functions.

The United States has been accepting more number of immigrants than any other country and hence the name, Land of Immigrants. Immigrating to the US has been a source of cultural change and population growth in the American history. In other words America has been energized by the immigrants who come from different culture and background. The USCIS makes sure that accurate and useful information is given to the people, by granting citizenship and immigration benefits and promoting awareness and thereafter ensure the unity of the immigration system. The USCIS plays a major role in processing the naturalization, refugee, asylum and the visa petitions, issuing employment authorization documents and granting permanent resident status. Effective and efficient processing of the applications is performed by the USCIS through the Application Support Centers and National Customer Service Center. Apart form these, the other goals of the USCIS include easy access to the resources and forms to the customers, secured information of the customers, providing customer oriented immigration benefits and information services, bringing a dynamic culture by promoting talented work force.