800,000 amnesty applications expected at
outset (Washington Times) – The government expects so many applications for
President Obama’s new deportation amnesty that it’s seeking a contractor just
to open the new mail and enter the forms into the system, with plans to operate
two shifts from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. every workday to keep up with the
anticipated workload.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,
the agency charged with approving the applications, expects more than 800,000
applications in just the first two and a half months, or a 70 percent surge
compared to last year’s total intake for the entire agency. Over the first 18
or so months, the agency will process more than 4 million pieces of mail
related to the larger part of the new amnesty, according to contracting
documents.
All applications must be opened in the
presence of two workers, one with “secret” security clearance, in order to
maintain integrity of the applications, and mail may need to be X-rayed for
security reasons, the documents show.
“USCIS is building the additional capacity
needed to begin accepting requests for upcoming immigration initiatives,” the
agency said in a statement to The Washington Times. “USCIS is on pace to have
several hundred employees on board and trained by mid-May, which will ensure
every case processed by USCIS receives a thorough, case-by-case review under
our guidelines.”
But one former USCIS executive testified to
Congress last week that the agency is going to be overwhelmed by the volume of
applications and the truncated approval process.
“It’s going to be hard to tell how much fraud
there is,” said Luke Bellocchi, a former deputy ombudsman for USCIS, as he
testified to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
last week.
He said the agency is likely to use
“abbreviated” criminal records checks that won’t delve too deeply into
applicants’ backgrounds, and said the 2012 amnesty — known as DACA, or Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals — which was a test run for the broader amnesty Mr.
Obama announced last year, accepted “pretty much any kind of documentation” to
establish their identity.
That could be an even bigger problem for the
new amnesty, known as DAPA — or Deferred Action for Parental Accountability —
which applies to illegal immigrants who arrived as adults and who could have
committed crimes in their home countries that wouldn’t show up on the
abbreviated criminal checks.
The administration says it is confident in
its ability to make a case-by-case decision on each application, and says it
expects half of the 3.85 million people eligible for the new amnesty to apply
once the application period opens in the middle of May.
Still, that means the government expects
149,388 applications in May, another 324,488 applications in June and 350,242
in July, before the numbers drop to 221,087 in August and 139,331 in September.
USCIS has also said it plans to issue a
contract for printing millions of work permits that will go to the illegal
immigrants granted amnesty from deportation under the new policies.
Bo Cooper, a former Immigration and
Naturalization Service employee, testified to the Senate last week that the
immigration service is used to ebbs and flows in applications and should be
able to handle this one.
“It’s a large-scale program that will pose
challenges, but the tools I believe are there,” he said, saying he believes the
penalties already in the law for trying to defraud the government on
immigration applications will deter bad actors.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week that
the program will cost between $324 million and $484 million over the next three
years, with the money to come from fees paid by the applicants. The
administration has promised that none of the money will come from taxpayers.
But the contract documents show the agency is
planning to spend money on the program well before it begins collecting any
fees. Late last year USCIS advertised for about 1,000 job openings at the
Crystal City, Virginia, facility that will process the DAPA applications, including
adjudicators, managers and fraud unit personnel.
The new contract documents say there will
also be space for 250 contract workers to receive the applications at the
facility use the X-ray machines to scan the packages as they come in. The
agency said that was standard practice.
Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National
Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, said he was worried that the
agency is cutting the training for the new employees from six weeks to five,
and said he fears USCIS will try out a new method of adjudicating cases by
having different officers specialize in a part of an application. He said that
could mean there is no single officer who has a complete view of an
application.
“How you could have proper adjudications this
way is beyond my scope of reason,” Mr. Palinkas said. “They want to
cleric-alize the job, and they’re really not concerned about whether the
documents entered are fraudulent or not. They just want to push the papers
along.”
Spurred in part by those fears, House
Republicans have passed a spending bill that would halt the new amnesty by
denying USCIS the ability to spend money on the project. The language is
included in the 2015 homeland security funding bill, which must be passed by
Feb. 27 or else the agency runs out of money.
Senate Democrats are conducting a filibuster
of the bill.
Most employees would continue working because
their jobs are deemed essential, but they would not be paid until the
department is funded, and new changes, such as additional money for White House
security, wouldn’t be implemented.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell said he’s done all he can to try to break Democrats’ filibuster, and
it’s up to the House GOP to take the next step.
“It’s clearly stuck in the Senate. We can’t
get on it; we can’t offer amendments to it. And the next step is obviously up
to the House,” Mr. McConnell said.
But last week House Speaker John A. Boehner
said the House has passed a bill, and it’s up to the Senate to send something
back.
Democrats, whose filibuster has left the GOP
in the tricky situation, watched the Republican struggle with bemusement, and
shot down potential Republican escape routes such as passing another stopgap
funding bill to keep Homeland Security running in the short term.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said a
stopgap bill would cost states some grant money and could lead to tens of
thousands of furloughs of nonessential employees.
“It’s not good for protecting our homeland,”
the Nevada Democrat said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/10/obama-amnesty-has-feds-bracing-for-illegal-immigra/
-
http://www.teaparty.org/feds-brace-illegal-alien-onslaught-82660/#sthash.jJRAcLlj.dpuf
No comments:
Post a Comment