According to recent statements by Emilio Gonzalez, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the average processing time for naturalization applications has dramatically increased. Currently, the wait time for these applications is roughly 18 months; an increase from the previous time period of just 7 months. In addition, Gonzalez commented that the average family-based adjustment of status application currently takes 12 months to process. These delays are due to a massive increase in requests for naturalization that were received by USCIS this summer; from June to August 2007, more than 3 million naturalization applications were received.

USCIS does plan to increase its staff and to automate procedures wherever possible; however, the backlog is immense and USCIS is hesitant to comment on when they can return to a standard 6-month average time period for processing naturalization applications.