The U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency with the Department of
Homeland Security, was created in 2002 and assumed its functions on March 1,
2003, as a result of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. USCIS has over 200
offices around the world and staffs 19,000 employees and contractors in four
directorates and nine program offices. Applications are processed in four major
USCIS Service Centers and 83 Field Offices in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Funding USCIS
operations largely from user fees, less than 4 percent of its FY2014 budget
came from Congressional appropriations. According to William A. Kandel, writing
in a Congressional Service Report in May 2015, $124 million USCIS funding came
from direct congressional appropriations and $3.097 billion came from user fees
in 2014. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R44038.pdf
Over twenty
years ago, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was
transformed by creating the Immigration Examinations Fee Account (IEFA) in 1988
to fund the agency’s activities. “The agency has two other small accounts that
were created to support specific purposes both within and outside USCIS: the H-1B
Non-Immigrant Petitioner Fee Account; and the H-1B Fraud Prevention and
Detection Fee Account.”
When DHS
receives its annual funding, USCIS also receives its direct appropriations. In
previous years, Congress also funded special projects through direct
appropriations such as backlog reduction. In recent years, according to CRS,
appropriations have exclusively funded E-Verify and immigrant integration
grants. E-Verify is a system that electronically confirms if individuals have
proper authorization to work in the United States.
INS was
legally allowed to charge fees for immigration services even before the passage
of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA). When the Immigration
Examinations Fee Account (IEFA) was created, USCIS collected most of its budget
from user fees, and its budget was no longer subject to annual congressional
approval. Congress has little or no influence on our immigration policies and
enforcement.
Our
President issued on November 20, 2014 the Immigration Accountability Executive
Action which included provisions such as an expansion of the existing Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program started in 2012, and the new
Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA)
program that “grants certain unauthorized aliens protection from removal, and
work authorization, for three years.”
Applicants
submit petitions and pay user fees to USCIS which “would purportedly pay for
the cost of administering the program.” This executive action benefited 5
million unauthorized aliens living in the United States. “The deferred action
programs of the President’s executive action have been temporarily enjoined.”
Some
Congressmen, reflecting the wishes of their constituents, oppose deferred
action programs but have little or no options to stop the programs using the
annual funding process. They cannot control an agency which is largely independent
of Congress. To change this situation, an enactment of law would be required
which Congress does not seem interested in pursuing, as the illegal immigration
debacle continues unabated despite the recent violent attacks in Paris by “refugees”
from Syria and elsewhere who were allowed into EU unrestricted.
While some
are happy that USCIS reduces the burden of cost to American taxpayers, others
are concerned over the lack of congressional oversight on its activities and
its lack of accountability to Congress.
Additional
potential issues include the level of fees that may prevent potential
applicants from seeking benefits or deter lawful permanent residents from becoming
citizens; the pace and progress of information technology modernization may not
serve legal petitioners efficiently, causing huge backlogs of 4 million legal
applications; and the inability of Congress to oversee the adequacy of
personnel management and resources.
With the
leading purpose of processing immigrant petitions, USCIS handled in 2014 six million
petitions for immigration-related services and benefits. USCIS performs other
functions:
-
Adjudication
of immigration and naturalization petitions
-
Refugee
and asylum claims and related humanitarian and international concerns
-
Immigration-related
services such as issuing employment authorizations
-
Petitions
of nonimmigrant change-of-status
“Humanitarian
functions have no associated fee” but the following do levy user fees:
-
Immigration adjudication
Of the 6 million petitions processed each year, 1 million are for
permanent status and 5 million are for temporary non-immigrant status; adjudicators
determine if immediate relatives and family members of U.S. citizens and lawful
permanent resident (LPRs) are eligible; if employees U.S. businesses
demonstrate they are needed and no other Americans are available; they also
determine if foreign nationals on a temporary visa are eligible to change to
another non-immigrant status or LPR status
-
Work authorization
Screens aliens for work under certain conditions
-
Employment verification
Checks lawful status to work in the United States (since FY2007,
congressional appropriations have funded the E-Verify)
-
International Services
USCIS Office of International Affairs “adjudicates refugee applications
and conducts background and record checks related to some immigrant petitions
abroad;” a component of this program is the asylum officer corps who interview
and screen asylum applicants; according to USCIS, “a person seeking asylum is
applying for protection from persecution for the same reasons as a refugee but,
unlike a refugee, is present in the United States”
-
Fraud Detection and National Security
This office flags applications and petitions that trigger national
security and criminal database notifications; such duties, formerly performed
by INS enforcement, are now under the responsibility of DHS’s Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE)
-
Civic Integration
Instructing and training on citizenship rights and responsibilities via a
Citizenship Resource Center website and via the Immigrant Integration Grants
Program “which assists public or private nonprofit organizations that provide
citizenship instruction and naturalization application services to LPRs
-
Naturalization
Granting U.S. citizenship to LPRs; adjudicators must check if aliens have
continuously resided in the U.S. for a specific period of time, have good moral
character, are able to read, write, speak, and understand English, and have a
basic knowledge of U.S. civic and history;
Do unsavory
characters who are not worthy of American citizenship or of refugee status slip
through the adjudication process? Of course they do, the terrorist Tsernaev
brothers come to mind.
One of the
biggest criticisms of USCIS is that petitions are still processed in the “outmoded”
paper form and there are constant complaints of lost files. Since 2008 USCIS
has embarked on IT Modernization and Client Services in order to “improve
information sharing, workload capacity, and system integrity.” Eventually the
system will be “paperless, centralized, and consolidated, ensuring national
security and integrity, customer service, operational efficiency, and quality
in immigration benefit decisions.” (Fiscal
Year 2016 Congressional Budget Justifications, p. 3357)
Since
Congress is so weak and unwilling to protect our borders, our American
interests, and our sovereignty, would a President Trump be ready to use his
executive pen to stop the flood of illegal immigrants by building a fence, enforcing
current immigration laws, and deporting criminal illegal aliens?
Here's a disturbing 20 min video on the refugee situation:
ReplyDeletehttp://buzzpo.com/this-is-the-most-disturbing-muslim-refugee-video-you-will-ever-see/
Thank you, PaBlum.
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