Thought this would be of interest for all who have an application with USCIS running, or plan to do so in the next months.

A new contractor, Stanley Inc., is taking over clerical work processing visa and naturalization applications. Sorting mail and dropping them in the right bucket so your application forms arrive on the right desk, as an example.
Big oops... apparently Stanley calculated their bid under wrong assumptions what the workers would actually earn. Way too low... Still being responsive and responsible (as the feds usually put it), their bid won and the workers will now get a significant pay cut, right before Christmas no less, as they roll over to the new contractor. In the meantime... Stanley's client, the UCSIS, try to cover their behinds claiming that wage disputes were strictly between the contractor and their employees.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/us...zyhLsERDqY2YTQ

So heads-up. Unless this gets fixed quickly, you'll wait even longer to get something done at the USCIS, and chances rise your application gets derailed due to some administrative mishap.