USCIS

PROs:
1) Noble work. Adjudicating Immigration benefits for those seeking protection or those planning to stay in the United States permanently and being part of that chapter is wonderful.

2) Some flexibility options. If you are in the service center, you are golden. Flexibility work hours, work-from-home option, etc., you name it.

HOWEVER (please see the cons)

CONs:
1) Numbers, numbers, and more numbers. The upper management, some with no experience adjudicating immigration benefits, want more numbers. They want you to become a factory stamp worker, granting everything. As much as I'd like to grant everyone, some are not qualified when filing, or some must go through additional steps per our policy and the U.S. Immigration law. Yet, the management wants more numbers from you. And if you make a mistake in that process, they will grill you alive.

2) Must be perfect. Field Office Directorate (FOD) Immigration Officers are end-of-the-line defense. We are the last resort to catch all mistakes that previous or consular officers could not. Field officers must then address all these discrepancies and records at the interview. These interviews take time, from reviewing files and system checks to interviewing and eliciting testimonies. Sometimes, the interview also requires an interpreter to assist the applicants better. Yet, the management wants to finish fast and make a decision.

3) No time. The management does not give you any time to work on your continued cases. Let's say you could not finish your case and had to "continue" in order to retrieve all other necessary information. Guess what? No time will be given. Managements will come after you if you do not finish those cases, but at the same time, they will not give you time to work on them at all.

4) The constant changes in priorities. Change in priorities cannot be helped, and it happens anywhere you go. Immigration is especially impacted by real-life events, such as the record number of migrants seeking protection in the United States. That's what our agency was created to do. However, this could have been managed better. For example, create a system to work on those cases, etc. Instead of dumping all those work on officers.

5) Lack of training. As laws constantly change, keeping up with the newest law and changes is important. However, as mentioned above, the management will not give you any time whatsoever for you to be in the loop. In fact, the initial training itself needs to be more organized and updated.

6) Disconnection. We recently had a meeting with the upper management, and I was shaken. The upper management talked about how we are always on time, finishing the interviews on time, and based on this, we can do more work. Unfortunately, we NEVER finish the interviews on time. Just ask the applicants who had to wait 2 hours in the lobby for their interview. Because of the ridiculous number of scheduled interviews, we never finished the interviews on time. In fact, my colleagues and I stayed until the office closed to complete the interviews. The upper management is unaware of what's happening because they are too focused on getting those numbers for their own promotion.

7) Shortage of staff. This is no surprise at all. Because of all the reason(s) above, people are tired, burnt out, and leaving. Since I joined the adjudication side of the agency (less than two years as an Immigration Services Officer), I have seen 17 people leaving the office. Some for promotion, but most go to the service center for more flexibility. In the meantime, the rest of the officers in the field are forced to complete all pending cases. The field office is currently not at the level of the asylum office, where my colleagues at the asylum office have mandatory overtime. Imagine where you want to take a break, but are forced to do overtime. And you work for the government where workers' right is supposed to be demonstrated.

For the reasons above, I highly do not recommend this job, unless you received an offer from the service center.

Pros/Enjoyable parts
The US Government does provide a form of a IRA, health insurance, and vacation. Many people are motivated to help people when they seek a job as an Asylum Officer.

Cons
The time provided (by the USCIS) to conduct interviews, update systems, and write up cases in insufficient and forces Asylum Officers to engage in unpaid overtime. If you get a backlog of cases, you may be written up and I have know people to fired for having a backlog. Managers quality is very low. You are likely to get a bad manager and your experience will be terrible. You are viewed as only working there to make management look good. Promotion tends to be based on friends and who you know. The IT systems Asylum Officers use is 40 years old. This makes doing the job very hard. You will be forced to engage in long trainings (the usefulness is debatable) in remote locations of the US to keep your job. USCIS tried to upgrade the systems spending 3 billion and failed. You will discover that RAIO is only interested in numbers. You will be forced to do weekly trainings that take away from your time to process cases.

Advice to Management

I have no advice. RAIO USCIS Management knows there is high turnover and does not care. They can simply hire more people. My advice is to the US Congress and GAO. You need to know what is going on in RAIO Asylum and make changes.

Absolutely awful experience. supervisors and management make an already difficult job much harder, on purpose, due to incompetence and maliciousness. in the year that the NOLA office has been opened, more than half the officers were terminated, forced to resign(fired) or transferred away. the other asylum offices are not much better. the leadership is out of touch with reality, as they are career federal workers. they treat asylum and refugee officers as expendable. the director and supervisors consistently make incompetent decisions, which YOU will take the blame for. the only people that do "well" are those that stroke the supervisor's fragile egos and are total sycophants. if you have a spine, this job is not for you.

I would highly recommend working at USCIS Miami.  The weather is nice and the culture of people there is very warm and inviting. There was an abundance of senior knowledge and willingness to help you when you had doubts or didn't understand something.  It's very customer oriented position and the staff encourages involvement with it's customers at every opportunity including engaging in community out-reach projects.
Awesome atmosphere to work and constantly conduct training to ensure
everyone stays sharp and aware of the latest information.

Working at the Arlington Asylum Office was a deeply troubling, traumatic experience. I’m not talking about second hand trauma of interviewing asylum applicants - no, I’m talking about the experience of working in a highly dysfunctional, mismanaged office and agency. 

Avoid this job if you can; if you need it as a way in to the government or a stepping stone for something else, go for it, they have good benefits, and anything is what you make of it. Just be prepared that you may come out extremely disillusioned  and possibly traumatized. Asylum is a political game, don’t think that you are going to go in there and be a big hero.  

This office has alot of toe stepping and back stabbing to get promoted ahead of their peers. They have tried to implement a quality workplace initiative but the bottom line is still numbers. Production over work life needs. Supervisors are thrown into a position because they are upper managements favorites. A couple are good people skilled leaders. Most are just people whom know the subject matter but have no leadership experience / skills. There are alot of unhappy workers always seeking another agency or civilian job position. Turnover is about 50%

This review is based on conditions prior to the COVID-19 crisis.

It was enjoyable to assist applicants from countries around the world and help them with their citizenship process. Unfortunately, the workload had been excessive and additional personnel would make ease the stress level.
When applicant levels were lower, we had more time to converse with them and learn about their different cultures.

I liked my job at first. The good workers consistently had to help others that were either slow or imcompetent to do their jobs.  Mangement did not want anyone to go to the union which is what the lazy/slow workers would threaten to do.  Free lunches were great and some supervisors did care about their employees. Unfortunately, they had no power, thanks to the higher ups who didnt even know what was going on. 

I wouldn't recommend this job to anyone.  Supervisors can be very difficult and overly harsh.  Very punitive management style.  Workers are afraid to speak up and management  punishes them if they do.  Supervisors and work assignments change without warning and change rapidly.  Telework can be denied or taken away for any number of reasons and you can be forced to work in the office - which is fine as long as you don't choose to live far away from the office because you think you will be teleworking.

This job is very rewarding helping applicants. You will help people from all over the world who are looking for status or naturalization in our country. There is often a flex work schedule available. There is room for advancement. They're short staffed across the country so this can make it stressful with the workload. Overall it's a great place to work. Like any career it's what you make of it. 

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