Myself and thousands of other married couples have faced extremely lengthy processing times for our marriage-based petitions to sponsor our spouses abroad. I have been waiting over a year with no progress in my case and no estimated time of completion. I know many others who have been waiting to hear back from USCIS for 2+ years.
This is not about thoroughly reviewing the cases and determining if fraudulent , but it’s about cases sitting idly and not looked at for years at a time with no explanation. And families like mine and others who suffer the consequences of the agency not being able to handle the amounts of requests that come in, or having an efficient way of processing those requests. In addition, the financial hardship of the couple having to pay to fly back and forth from each other’s countries, because the non-citizen is unable to move to the USA until the case is approved abroad. And the separation of families causes emotional stress (not being able to start a family because of the separation, long distance marriage, living alone without your spouse, etc.).