Actual INS Applications
 

I don't know if anyone of you have stumbled across this page on US CIS website which I believe is for lawyers or law-related professionals. However, it's available to the general public. There are actual approval and denial letters (with personal information blacked out). There are also AOS applications listed there. But most of these are from 2003 (or older). Posting here since this is public information and I don't think many poeple know it exists (except the darn lawyers ;))

http://uscis.gov/graphics/lawsregs/admindec3/index.htm

Re: Actual INS Applications
 

Hi:

It is public. However, legal training is often needed to understand these.

It should be noted that although these decision have ALWAYS been available for public view [in "public reading rooms" of all district offices -- try and find it though :) ], many are now made public on the internet with, as you note, with the identifying information redacted.

However, even though available to the public, these are NOT "published" PRECEDENT decisions. Those can be found in the "virtual law library" of the Board of Immigration Appeals at www.usdoj.gov/eoir. In a decision in 1998, [I recall the title as Matter of Izummi (sp?), the AAO held that the prior non-published decisions are not binding -- the INS had previously approved 96 identical petitions and AAO said that 96 past mistakes didn't obligate them to make the same mistake a 97th time].

Also, note that your URL does NOT include I-130 petitions -- they are not in the jurisdiction of the AAU.

You are free to look them up -- I have no objection -- but there is strong tendency for those to be misunderstood since they are written in [bad] "legalspeak".

Re: Actual INS Applications
 

Thank you Mr. Folinskyinla for all the valuable information you have been providing to this forum. You are correct, the legalspeak can sometimes be misunderstood by people. However, it was interesting and fun to read through the arguments made in some of those decision letters. I went through a few of them, and as you can expect from a department such as US CIS, in some paragraphs they forgot to black out the names. That's sad since it's somebody's life and now viewable throughout the world. They have such details about the person's history (in the decisions) that I was surprised to see that it's available publicly. If I file an immigration petition for someone, I wouldn't want it to be so easily accessible to the world. Though the information is invaluable for law professionals and even those who are dealing with CIS for their own cases, it also has a potential of getting in the wrong hands since anyone in the world with Internet access can access them.

Re: Actual INS Applications
 

Indeed - I also read them and found them quite interesting. I recall an email this week from someone wondering if the USCIS would know if they'd overstayed or not from a visit to the US some years ago. Pretty much everyone on the board explained to the Poster that it'd be near impossible to hide this.

Reading some of these decisions show just how far back they can or will reach back into a file/case!