After years of planning and postponing, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service finally launched its portal for online applications last Tuesday, May 22^nd 2012. This new portal will allow immigrants to apply for citizenship online, where it is easier to keep track of documents. Gone are the days of losing important information in the mail, or worrying that a letter won't make it on time because the mail is delayed due to weather conditions. Instead, with the new electronic option, people can send their application to the Citizenship and Immigration Service in an instant.

In a few seconds the service can have the information that they need to approve or deny your request for legalization. This handy new invention is named ELIS, after Ellis Island, the first immigration station. The logo for the new system includes the Statue of Liberty, in order to keep with the Ellis Island theme. The UCIS believes that this could be the beginning of a brighter future for immigration services. They hope that things will go faster and become more efficient with the program in place. Without the fear of losing paperwork, the UCIS will be more organized. They hope to process 6 to 7 million applications online every year. While the UCIS is not abolishing the hard copy mail, they believe that there will be a sudden shift to online applications.

The UCIS Director spoke to a federal news station, saying that the UCIS intends to transform from a paper-based agency to an electronic one. While the switch has been very challenging at times, they hope that with trial and error, they will be able to succeed. At present, the electronic ELIS program is only open to people who are filing the I-539 form. This is the form that foreign students use to exchange their visas. Since foreign exchange students only comprise a small amount of the many men and women who want to become legalized citizens, the UCIS will use this group as the guinea pig. Before the electronic application is opened for the massive amounts of immigrants, they will try different techniques and refine the process with those filing an I-539.

The UCIS director says that crews are currently tooling and tampering with the system. They are already working to perfect bugs in the initial launch, and will then move on to phase 2 of their plan for ELIS. They plan to start phase 2 within 45 days. This next step will allow organizations and individuals to open an online count where all the immigration forms can be stored and saved. These little tools will allow them to submit applications, load up supporting documents and even receive updates on their case in real time. They can look to see whether or not their applications have been viewed yet. With one account per person, the immigrant and the government can both keep track of documents in an easy manner. They can note when documents were submitted and it they were on time.

While the UCIS believes that this will streamline the immigration process, they don't expect that it will make the wait times for naturalization any shorter for applicants. This is because it still takes a long time for people to review the documents, and the law only permits so many visas to be given out each year. The UCIS does admit that they will probably see a 15 percent time savings in adjusting cases. They also say that having electronic copies of all documents will make it easy for UCIS officials to e-mail their documents back and forth. This will save time. Right now, people must make copies of information and send them in packets all across the country. Hopefully ELIS will become a helpful tool in immigration services and allow more and more families an easier way to gain naturalization.