Thread: Immigration Contractor Demotivates Employees To Do the Right

Immigration Contractor Demotivates Employees To Do the Right Thing
Mike Cutler

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/ho ... id=1385776

Contract employees who help process millions of visa and citizenship applications for a federal immigration agency are having their salaries slashed, even as a surge in new applications rises precipitously. The workers whose wages will be cut are contract employees in document processing centers in St. Albans, Vt., and Laguna Niguel, Calif. They are part of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for deciding visa applications.



The processing of applications for immigration benefits represents a potential area of vulnerability to our nation and our citizens. These employees handle the so-called file room of immigration services; unfortunately, if you want to place a spy into an organization, you are best served by putting that spy into the file room.



Our government has become addicted to hiring outside contractors to do the jobs that dedicated civil servants used to perform. This may enable contractors who win those lucrative contracts to make money but it means that rather than employing government workers who are working the way up the ladder, or at least building equity in the government pension system, you wind up with workers who are simply looking for a paycheck.



The work performed by the support personnel at USCIS is not a temporary job. As long as aliens immigrate to the United States and seek various immigration benefits including naturalization, there will be a demand for the jobs done by these employees. Privatization may seem like a good idea to some, but for reasons of national security, it makes better sense to employ a dedicated workforce of government employees.



Now that a new company, Stanley, Inc., has been awarded the contract to do the support work for USCIS, Stanley will have to hire employees to replace those who had been previously employed by the old contractor. They may pick up some of the previous employees as their employees, but it would appear that they won the contract by underbidding their competitors. This means that now those who are part of the system that performs critical backroom paperwork and other functions will suffer a pay cut of some $400 per month.



The first question is, "How do you attract and motivate people who will be doing this important work?" This is a question that is apparently being asked by Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont. Senator Sanders is right on target with that question.



Another question that I would want to have an answer to is, "What impact will this salary cut have not only on morale but on integrity?" In considering this question you should also consider that a portion of the workforce will be given a "bonus" if they can boost productivity. I put the word bonus in quotes because the amount of the bonus is the amount of money that was taken out of their salaries in the first place!



I am all for getting the "most bang for the buck." Certainly as a taxpayer I want our government's employees, and contract employees, to be as productive as possible. However, how do you measure productivity? I am willing to bet that the measure of productivity will be how fast the job gets done, not how accurately the job gets done.



The situation at USCIS is anything but funny. This represents a threat to national security. Just over one year ago, Senators Charles Grassley of Iowa and Sue Collins of Maine requested that the GAO conduct an investigation into the allegation that in 2005 USCIS had "lost" 111,000 immigration alien files relating to aliens seeking various immigration benefits including some 30,000 who sought to naturalize. The GAO issued a report confirming that this had, in fact, happened.



Some of their press release reads as follows:



“WASHINGTON – Senators Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins today released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that says 111,000 alien files (A-files) were missing in 14 United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) offices. The report also says that as many as 30,000 immigrants’ applications to become U.S. citizens were processed despite the missing files…



“Senators Grassley and Collins requested the report after the Immigration and Naturalization Service granted U.S. citizenship to a suspected terrorist, without checking his A-file, which had been lost. His citizenship application was therefore approved despite indications in his A-file about ties to a terrorist organization…



“We should remember that some of the September 11th hijackers had come into the country with legal visas but were allowed to get ‘lost in the system’ before they surfaced again to unleash their attack. It is unthinkable that since then, our immigration system still allows a person with known terrorist ties to become a citizen simply because they can’t find the person’s file,â€

Hi Greg,

Do these contract workers happen to include H-1B visa card holders? If so, then laws are being violated.