Remember "Bagdad Bob"? He was the propaganda flack for Saddam Hussein who, even when tanks were outside his building, boldly proclaimed that "the invaders have been thrown back and are nowhere near us." Many feel that after the invasion of Iraq was over, he found a new job as the head of public affairs for the USCIS. Their press releases are certainly worthy of him.

The USCIS has just updated their AOS processing statistics. The date of the new document is December 11, 2009 - updating the earlier document released on August 25, 2009. The new documents shows larger numbers of pending applications. Since other CIS reports do not show corresponding filing receipts, we may reasonably conclude that these increases are due to the CIS actually counting more of their backlog.

The last document provided totals that were substantially less than the totals shown for the USCIS in other sections of their web site. The total number shown in this most recent document is 209,441 pending EB AOS cases. At the same time, if you go to the "Check processing times" page, you will see that the NSC has a backlog of 138,614 EB AOS cases and the TSC has a backlog of 122,159 EB AOS cases. Taken together, these total 260,773 pending EB AOS cases - 51,332 more than the total shown in the just released chart.

This quick accounting does not include EB AOS cases that have been sent to the National Benefits Center or cases that have been sent to local district offices. The precise number of EB AOS cases pending in offices other than the TSC and NSC is unknown, but easily more than 50,000. Thus, in addition to the 209,441 cases shown in the most recently released charts, there at least 50,000, and more likely more than 100,000 EB AOS cases that are not included in the USCIS accounting.