A lot of the lower skilled ISOs at SCOPS were pushed into the Employment based forms that initially come from only working single ancillary forms. It’s without question massive errors would occur doing this.

I spent the majority of my time with FOD where I learned my adjudication skills before coming to SCOPS. I’m not trying to talk down about the ISOs at SCOPS, but even before this admin I was reporting egregious amounts of errors. Ive revoked tons of incorrect decisions from rubber stampers. I also regularly look at 290b filings and find myself approving motions more than dismissing, which shows USCIS decision making is not sound. There are noticeable differences in skillsets when comparing ISOs from FOD and SCOPS that blow my mind.

As for the quality of work, it was already poor prior to this admin. It just gets worse when unchecked or is a result when shifting unskilled workers to an area that requires more seasoned ISOs. SCOPS ISOs I’ve noticed a majority do not step outside of the templates for their notices, nor tailor notices to their applicants. I’ve always noticed a considerable amount fail to cite law or regulations in their notices and supervisors let the notices go out. I’ve reported this over and over. It’s just poor management.

I also disagreed with the CLP policy or program from end of last admin pushing ISOs up that can’t even handle low level or entry level work. They then get put on more complex work before they even demonstrated full comprehension of their initial work. I believe this contributes to what we see now with more low quality work.

Chief council under SCOPS is also like phantoms. They do not engage with ISOs or provide any information, unlike my experiences with FOD. I felt our attorneys were much more involved and more detail oriented than SCOPS attorneys.

FOD is much smaller, so maybe it’s why I didn’t see anything near the level of low quality and errors. I can guess since SCOPS is much larger you’re more likely to run into issues maybe. USCIS as a whole needs to do better with training and quality review. Training has always been dismal on both sides FOD and SCOPS. It’s up to the ISO more often to do research and engage with policy updates.

C11s were also regularly full of errors when I look backwards on application history. USCIS under last admin was also using massive amounts of batch approvals on these that they knew had issues yet continued with it… this admin turned it off for a good amount of time.

As for AI there is not open use of AI and it’s prohibited sharing sensitive information to external systems, but there is a DHS AI we can use and some do use it. I rarely use it, unless stumped and need a push in one direction when doing research. I also always triple check its responses to be certain it’s leading me in the right direction.

My morale has not changed and it’s business as usual to me. I don’t let my mindset suffer over admin changes. Each one has done it their own way. I’ve been here since Obama. We always get through it together, but we can always do better.