Stories the budget tells

USCIS is two budgets, and quoting one as the whole misstates it. Almost all of its money is fee revenue — spending funded by applicant and petitioner fees, not appropriated by Congress. This monitor keeps the two strictly apart.

USCIS publishes no audit opinion of its own; it is a DHS component, so its books are audited inside the Department's consolidated financial statements.

Those statements have earned a multi-year streak of clean opinions, with USCIS consolidated into them. Over the same window the Department of Defense — the largest federal department — has never earned one.

The internal-control track is a separate story — the FY2025 DHS audit carries an adverse opinion on internal control, reported honestly on the audit page. And because USCIS is fee-funded, it reconciles its largest account to Congress every year in the Immigration Examinations Fee Account Statement of Financial Condition — the same trace-to-source discipline every figure here practices.

The budget is authority; this is execution. In FY… USCIS obligated … in prime awards (USAspending, awarding sub-agency USCIS under DHS 070) — a fraction of total budget authority, because most fee spending is salaries and adjudication, not contracts.

USCIS is a bureau, so there is no five-decade OMB series to chart — but the shape is not new. Fees have funded the overwhelming majority of USCIS for decades.

See the full arc on the history page.