ImmigrationObama’s executive action may divert resources from handling legal immigrants
Critics of President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration are worried that shifting immigration resources from work done on behalf of legal immigrants to applications filed by those in the country illegally would discourage future immigrants from entering the United States legally.A former federal immigration official compares the new immigration effort to the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program (DACA), which drew more than 600,000 applications from Dreamers.One of the effects of DACA was an increase in the wait time for green cards for immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens from five months to fifteen months, which critics blame on personnel being diverted to work on the DACA program.
A group of immigrants taking the oath of citizenship // Source: 1233.tw
Critics of President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration are worried that shifting immigration resources from work done on behalf of legal immigrants to applications filed by those in the country illegally would discourage future immigrants from entering the United States legally. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may have to double its capacity to process applications from up to five million undocumented immigrants seeking permits to live and work in the United States. The potential for mass fraud is likely with a high volume of applications in a short amount of time, and the wait time for all immigration approvals could increase.
A former federal immigration official compares the new immigration effort to the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program (DACA), which drew more than 600,000 applications from Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who are under the age of 31; entered the United States before age sixteen; have lived continuously in the country for at least five years; have not been convicted of a felony, a “significant” misdemeanor, or three other misdemeanors; and are currently in school, graduated from high school, earned a GED, or served in the military. “The modeling and the logistics are incredibly challenging,” said the former official. “USCIS processes about four million petitions a year already… So, we’re going to double that in a short period of time.”
According to Politico, White House officials consider the administration’s experience with DACA as preparation for what to expect next summer, when undocumented immigrants affected by Obama’s executive order will start to submit applications for legal status. “We have been very focused on this for a long time. We have been looking at how you would do this for many, many months now,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said last Friday. “We have the advantage of having done the DACA program two years ago, which is the model for how the affirmative relief portion of the president’s steps would work, it’s the basis for that. So, we have a good sense of how to do that and the people who helped set that are still in the White House and the agency.”
Funding the new immigration programs Obama announced last week will be partly covered by application fees. According to USCIS figures provided to Congress, the 2012 DACA program required 900 new employees and cost $280 million over a three-year period. The program, however, brought in about $425 million in fees over three years. The new immigration programs will bring in $380 per work permit and $85 for scanning of fingerprints as part of the “biometric” background check.
On concerns of fraud with incoming applications, some Republican lawmakers say the White House is likely to encounter the same problems it faced with DACA. Under that program, USCIS “publicly touts online that officials do not regularly verify the validity of the documentary evidence provided by applicants to meet the program’s requirements, thereby encouraging fraud,” House Judiciary Committee chairman Robert Goodlatte (R-Virginia) told Politico last Friday. “DACA unfairly punishes legal immigrants who played by the rules by creating longer wait times for their applications to be processed. Now that deferred action applies to millions more unlawful immigrants, these problems will only be made much worse.”
One of the effects of DACA was an increase in the wait time for green cards for immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens from five months to fifteen months, which critics blame on personnel being diverted to work on the DACA program. “There became a huge backlog and longer wait times for these relatives of U.S. citizens to come here,” one House GOP aide said last Friday. “That is going to happen again. There’s no way around it.”
Still, immigration officials including DHS chief Jeh Johnson, are confident that the new immigration programs ordered by Obama will roll out successfully. “We learned a lot. CIS has learned a lot about implementation of such a program from that experience,” Johnson said. “My observation is that, while there may have been some bumps in the road in the start-up of it like any large government program, the implementation of it has gone relatively well. It’s obviously made a lot of people happy.”
