Department of Homeland Security
Citizenship and Immigration Service Intern
One of the most valuable experiences that I have had was interning with the Department of Homeland Security in the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) branch. I worked with the Production Management and Quality Assurance team, who monitor and report the efficiency of immigration field offices in the southwest United States. Field offices use this information to streamline their processes and speed up the timeline for those who want to immigrate to the United States. The knowledge that the work I was doing would help people follow their dreams made me excited to go to work each day. Part of my role was to assist with the processing and organization of data for reporting purposes. I used many higher-level tools within Microsoft Excel, such as macros, and also was introduced to other data analysis software such as Microsoft MapPoint and Esri ArcMap. While I didn’t work directly with these tools, I was fascinated by their functionality. They used the maps to determine the most efficient locations for field offices and to see what types of populations they could anticipate visiting those field offices based on previous data. I also had the opportunity to research and write articles for the USCIS internal publication on topics relating to data quality and team organization.