The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has not existed in eight years, having been dismantled and its responsibilities reassigned, yet many people still try to search for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) by searching for "INS."

The USCIS has posed the question on its official blog of why it may be that the organization received 30,000 searches for a government entity that has not existed since 2003. One theory is that "INS agents" are still an action movie archetype despite the demise of the agency, and another is that the INS was around for so long that people still haven't gotten used to the change.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the US federal government first began to address immigration in 1891 by appointing a Commissioner of Immigration within the Treasury Department. Responsibility for immigration ins matters changed hands several times before ending up in the control of the Department of Justice in 1940 under the INS, which was established in 1933. 

After 63 years, responsibility for immigration matters was again reassigned, this time to the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security, and the INS was effectively broken into three organizations – USCIS, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Source: Though the INS has not existed in eight years, people still search for it, green card renewal