On January 24, 2006, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a Public Notice regarding the processing of naturalization applications for family members.
It states that: "USCIS will no longer group naturalization applications...unless specifically requested by a family."
In the notice, USCIS advises that their reason for implementing this change is to more efficiently process the applications in a timely manner. When the applications are grouped together (Group Management), each application in the group must wait to move to each stage of the process until all applications in the group have completed the process.
Having identified over 10,000 affected by this "grouping" process:
"Effective immediately, USCIS will decouple, or 'ungroup,' all currently established groups allowing individual cases to proceed through the process independently."
The group processing remains an option. Family applicants who wish to take advantage of "Group Management" are instructed to submit a written request for grouping when their naturalization application is mailed to the appropriate Service Center.
