From the WashPost Editorial Board:
By Editorial Board
July 4 at 8:30 AM ET
AS A business mogul in Atlantic City, Donald Trump ran casinos that teetered continually toward bankruptcy, costing gullible investors well over $1 billion. Now President Trump’s policies have bankrupted the federal government’s main agency overseeing legal immigration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is on the brink of imposing furloughs on thousands of its employees and is begging Congress for a bailout.
USCIS, which handles green cards for permanent legal residents, manages citizenship procedures and vets visa applicants, depends for its operating revenue almost entirely on fees from “customers,” meaning immigrants. The business model Mr. Trump’s administration devised for USCIS was a recipe for financial ruin: deplete income by driving away fee-paying applicants and pile up expenses by hiring thousands of new employees. Little wonder that after three-and-a-half years, USCIS has gone hat in hand to Congress, pleading for $1.2 billion. Without the extra funds — for an agency meant to be self-sufficient — USCIS has said more than 13,000 employees, of some 20,000 total workers, will be furloughed without pay indefinitely, starting next month.
Under Mr. Trump, USCIS has become a model of dysfunction. Perversely, that may be just fine with a White House that has been intent on deterring not only undocumented migrants but legal immigrants as well. It has done the latter largely through a matrix of policies that have made the agency much less a means by which immigrants are connected with U.S. employers and reconnected with relatives living in this country, and much more a nearly impassable obstacle course.
Well before the pandemic, applications for an array of immigrant categories plummeted as word spread that layers of new rules and vetting were driving down approval rates, and even trivial mistakes such as typos in applications would trigger rejections. In-person interviews were added as requirements for applicants who had not previously needed them, including skilled workers already in the country who needed visa extensions. Green card applications slumped in the Trump administration’s first two years and might fall further as applicants learn they would be disqualified if deemed likely to need public benefits such as subsidized housing or food stamps. The pandemic accelerated the agency’s death spiral as revenue derived from fees has dropped by half since March.
The effect of a mass furlough of USCIS staff would be to throw even more grit into the bureaucratic gears, further slowing approvals for work permits, including for high-skilled immigrants, and green cards. If the administration is intent on breaking the nation’s complex immigration machinery, which has supplied American businesses with the talent and energy of millions of employees, it is on the right path.
Employers are alarmed at the prospect of such a breakdown, with good reason. Virtually every sector of the country’s economy depends on a steady supply of immigrants, which in itself is justification for Congress to reassess USCIS’s fee-based model. Immigrants have provided the spark, drive and muscle that have driven growth and success in the United States since its founding. Given their contributions, it seems a gratuitous burden that they are also required to shoulder the cost of their admission to the country.
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The solution is actually very simple. Congress should require DHS to reprogram the necessary funds to run USCIS from the unneeded wall, unnecessary and often illegal immigration detention, and counterproductive civil deportations. All private detention contracts should be terminated and the money repurposed to USCIS. There should be a moratorium on DHS removals until USCIS is back in full operation and has eliminated all backlogs. Fee increases should be barred.
Exceptions should be made allowing deportations for those convicted of “aggravated felonies” and those whom the DHS can show by clear and convincing evidence entered the U.S. illegally after the date of enactment, following an opportunity for a full and fair hearing before a U.S. Magistrate Judge at which they will have an opportunity to apply for asylum and other protections without regard to any regulation or precedent decision issued during the Trump Administration. Appeal from any adverse decision may be had by either party to the U.S. District Judge and from there to the Court of Appeals with an opportunity to petition the Supreme Court for review. U.S. District Judges shall have the option of designating sitting U.S. Immigration Judges (but not anyone who has served a BIA Appellate Immigration Judge) with five or more years of judicial experience to serve as a “Special U.S. Magistrate Judge” to hear such immigration cases.
If Democrats can’t get a “veto proof majority” in both houses, they should just let the USCIS remain in bankruptcy until we get better Government. Like the rest of the Trump immigration kakistocracy, USCIS is a dysfunctional mess 🤮 that serves no useful purpose under current conditions.
Welfare Reform: We’ve identified the largest group of “welfare cheats” in U.S. history. Collectively, this gang of public benefits fraudsters is known as “The Trump Administration.” Its Members are worse than useless. We are actually paying them to pollute our environment, inhibit our voting, spread deadly disease, block access to health insurance, undermine scientific truth, destroy our justice system, defend Confederate statues, spread racism and hate, commit crimes against humanity, turn our nation into a despised international laughingstock, and often line their own pockets and pockets of their cronies with ill-gotten loot while doing it.
But we have it in our power to end these gross abuses of our public purse and to throw this dangerous band of indolent sponges on society off the public dole! This November, vote like your life and the future of our nation depend on it! Because they do!
PWS
07-06-20