Thread: Immigration Plan Would Create Backlog

Immigration Plan Would Create Backlog

Wednesday, 24 Mar 2010 08:35 AM
By: Stephen Dinan

The federal government is not equipped to process the flood of applications from a proposed immigration legalization bill and the agency that would oversee that program won't be ready for "a few years," the office of the Homeland Security Department's inspector general told Congress on Tuesday.

The warning, from Assistant Inspector General Frank Deffer, could severely complicate President Obama's new push to pass an immigration bill this year.

Mr. Deffer said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, is in the midst of trying to move from being a paper-based system to having electronic records. He warned that adding millions of new applications, as the bill would do, would be a bad idea.

"Adding 12 million more people to the system would be the mother of all backlogs. Clearly to us the systems could not handle it now," Mr. Deffer told the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee. "It's going to take a few years, so it's something for Congress to consider that, when they implement this, they don't have a date too soon."

Mr. Obama, in a video message last weekend, told tens of thousands of immigrant rights supporters rallying on the Mall that he wants to try to get a bipartisan immigration bill passed this year that would legalize the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.

USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas said flatly that his agency will be prepared to handle that task but that he anticipates Congress will give the agency more resources to handle a new program.

"We will be ready for comprehensive immigration reform when it is enacted," he said after the hearing.

He said his confidence stemmed in part from the agency's ability to respond to the earthquake in Haiti, after which officials moved quickly to expedite travel for more than 1,000 Haitian orphans and accept applications for "temporary protected status" from tens of thousands of Haitians, both legal visitors and illegal immigrants, who were in the U.S. at the time of the disaster.

Temporary protected status lets those individuals remain in the U.S. and authorizes them to work while here. Mr. Mayorkas said his agency had received 33,000 applications for protected status from Haitians through the first two months since the Jan. 12 quake, and has handled those requests without hurting the agency's other duties.

The agency's ability to handle an influx of applications is critical, particularly after studies showed the last amnesty, in 1986, gave legal status to hundreds of thousands of criminals and others who should not have been allowed to stay under the conditions of the law.

Fraudulent documents are already a problem for other programs administered by USCIS, such as E-Verify, the voluntary system businesses can use to see if job applicants are authorized to work. A recent study prepared for the agency found that E-Verify was able to weed out only about half of the illegal immigrants who applied for jobs.

When the Senate was considering another immigration legalization bill in 2006, the agency's director, Emilio T. Gonzalez, warned that USCIS would need time to set up a new application process. The agency currently handles about 6 million applications a year.

Mr. Deffer said one of the reasons the inspector general began looking at USCIS' technology five years ago was because of the efforts then to push for a new legalization bill.

He said occasional backlogs of applications are part of a cycle.

USCIS has been trying to upgrade its immigration benefits process for years, and Mr. Mayorkas acknowledged there have been few visible results. But he said the effort is moving, and officials are being careful because of many potential pitfalls.

He promised to provide Congress with benchmarks so lawmakers can evaluate the agency's progress on that transformation.

USCIS is primarily funded by the fees it charges applicants for immigration benefits, which means those fees have to cover most of the agency's nearly $3 billion budget.

Under Mr. Obama, the agency has asked for taxpayer money to cover the costs of applicants seeking asylum or refugee status, arguing that those people are less able to pay.

In 2007, across-the-board fee increases angered many Democrats in Congress, and USCIS is in the middle of another fee review that could lead to new cost hikes, unless Congress changes policy and approves more taxpayer money for the agency.

Some Democrats said that's what they'd prefer. Rep. Judy Chu, California Democrat, compared fee increases charged to those applying for citizenship to a poll tax, saying it was "even more of an impediment for them to become citizens."

The chairman of the full House Judiciary Committee made clear that he won't back fee increases.

"I'm for putting these fees into the appropriations process. But I don't want a fee increase," said Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat. "The increases have been astronomical already, so we don't need that."

http://newsmax.com/Newsfront/Immigratio ... /id/353682

Source: The Washington Times

At this time many of us are monitoring this and fighting to stop it. Those who played by the rules with legal residency are especially concerned as many will have the opprotunity to apply for their citizenship. They do not feel they should be put on the back burner while illegals get rewarded for breaking the law. I have a relative who is working a civilian job in a police department and needs her citizenship in order to be able to become a police officer. She has already said that she will sue the government if she is put on hold. I tell others to do the same.

Adding 12 million more people to the system would be the mother of all backlogs. Clearly to us the systems could not handle it now," Mr. Deffer told the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee. "It's going to take a few years, so it's something for Congress to consider that, when they implement this, they don't have a date too soon."

Sorry for the large font and bold, but this is an important article and in a logical world, should stop any talk of amnesty in its tracks. Please mention this critical point in your calls, e-mails and faxes against amnesty!

Cloward Piven strikes again.

Originally Posted by Populist

Adding 12 million more people to the system would be the mother of all backlogs. Clearly to us the systems could not handle it now," Mr. Deffer told the House Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee. "It's going to take a few years, so it's something for Congress to consider that, when they implement this, they don't have a date too soon."

Sorry for the large font and bold, but this is an important article and in a logical world, should stop any talk of amnesty in its tracks. Please mention this critical point in your calls, e-mails and faxes against amnesty!

The people pushing this AMNESTY legislation do not care about the backlogs and do not care about terrorists not being screened. In truth, they will eventually waive any fines and any concerns about convicted felons.

All they want is to gut the existing penalties of US law requiring the deportation of illegal aliens so that America's immune system will be irreparably damaged.

All they really want is legislative Amnesty for all of those people inside and outside of America that are guilty of treason and vast breaches of the US Constitution.

They want their merged economies... merged labor markets and merged consumer markets. Anything else is just pillow talk and window dressing.

W

At one point i read that people over 65 that were convicted felons will be allowed to get amnesty. I will look for the link to where that was stated. Obviously they will allow criminals to get amnesty. If you monitor the jail records for illegals and how many get arrested and then caught again in another state or county you will wonder how few under the current system would qualify.

Top DHS Official Says It Can't Handle a Mass Amnesty

Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 11:16 AM EDT - posted on NumbersUSA

Homeland Security Assistant Inspector General Frank Deffer told the House's Immigration Subcommittee on Tuesday that the agency is not prepared for a mass amnesty, and Congress should consider this if and when they take up comprehensive immigration reform. Deffer called a mass amnesty "the mother of all backlogs."

Deffer further told Congress that Immigration and Customs Services is in the process of converting from a paper-based system to an electronic-based system and offering citizenship to 11 million illegal aliens is a bad idea.

"Clearly to us the systems could not handle it now," Deffer said during his testimony. "It's going to take a few years, so it's something for Congress to consider that, when they implement this, they don't have a date too soon."

Pres. Obama said in a video message during Sunday's March for America rally on the National Mall that he will push for a bipartisan mass amnesty bill before the end of the year. In response to Deffer's statements, USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas said that the agency will be prepared for a mass amnesty, but expects resources to make it happen.

The last major amnesty passed in 1986 allowed hundreds of thousands of ineligible illegal aliens to receive citizenship because the agency wasn't prepared.

For more information on this story, see the Washington Times.

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/ ... nesty.html

March 25, 2010

Exclusive: Amnesty Would Create Tremendous Backlog at Immigration Agency that is Already Overburdened

Michael Cutler

For years now, I have been consistently and adamantly opposed to any sweeping amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens, whose presence in our country represents a violation of what should be our nation's sovereign borders and laws. My opposition is based on my many concerns that I have acquired in the nearly 40 years I have been involved with the many facets of the immigration issue, going back to October of 1971 when I entered on duty as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

Today I bring your attention to an article that appeared in the Washington Times this week. It was written by Stephan Dinan, who has been covering the immigration beat for many years, along with other areas of national security. His report documents the concerns raised by Assistant Inspector General Frank Deffer, who addressed the lack of capability that USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) has to deal with its workload today, let alone if an estimated 12 million applications for amnesty filed by illegal aliens are suddenly dumped into the administrative hopper of that understaffed and inept agency.

If our nation ignores the warnings of Assistant Inspector General Deffer and ignores the wishes of the American people, I fear that there will be no way of “getting the toothpaste back in the tube.â€

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