Obama's immigration actions could overwhelm agency, witness tells Senate
The agency charged with implementing the heart of President Barack Obamaâs new immigration policies could face major logistical challenges dealing with millions of new applications for deferred deportations and work permits, a former administration official testified Wednesday. Luke Bellocchi, the former deputy ombudsman who oversaw U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that itâs âhard to imagineâ the agency could handle the surge in new applications created by Obamaâs executive actions. Story Continued Below Bellocchi, who described a processing system based primarily on paper applications and postal mail, said the agency will probably have to divert resources from other immigration applications to process Obamaâs actions â despite USCISâs plans to hire 1,000 employees to handle the workload. âThis is the problem with trying to push through so many applications all at once without having proper resources,â Bellocchi told the committee, which convened a hearing examining the implications of Obamaâs unilateral moves. USCIS has been at the center of a congressional war over the sweeping actions Obama announced in November, which would block deportations for 5 million immigrants who are here illegally and give them legal work authorization. That tussle is playing out in the battle over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is due to run out Feb. 27. In a statement later Wednesday, USCIS said it has taken key steps to ensure it was ready to handle the new rush of applications expected later this year because of Obamaâs executive actions. âIn preparing for the workloads associated with the executive actions, USCIS has developed production and staffing models that allow agency leadership to assess the potential impacts on service delivery for existing workloads as well as the new workloads â all while maintaining the integrity and security of the immigration process,â the agency said in a statement. Congressional Republicans are demanding that no funds be used to carry out the actions Obama announced in 2014 â the first stages of which will begin taking applications Feb. 18. GOP lawmakers also want to gut a 2012 Obama administration program for young immigrants who came illegally as children, which effectively could leave more than 600,000 of the so-called Dreamers open to being deported. The Republican-led House passed a DHS funding bill with those provisions, but Senate Democrats blocked consideration of that measure on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, insisting that disputes over Obamaâs actions be kept out of the funding debate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is expected to bring up that same bill again multiple times this week â and Democrats are expected to continue to filibuster. The potential bureaucratic obstacles in implementing Obamaâs actions have been a less-noticed storyline compared with the partisan food fight on Capitol Hill. But immigration advocates have been focused on trying to ensure the programs will be implemented smoothly, which will be a key measure of whether Obamaâs actions succeed. Bellocchi, a Republican who used to work for the Senate Homeland panel, said USCIS has often diverted resources to handle so-called priority or high-profile applications, and will âprobablyâ do so with Obamaâs latest actions. In 2014, The New York Times reported that the 2012 initiative â called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals â caused delays for other immigration applications. For instance, a wait for a green card for a family member would typically be just five months or less, but after DACA was announced, the wait times stretched to 15 months and backlogged more than half a million applications. Still, another witness at Wednesdayâs hearing disputed that USCIS would not be able to handle the millions in new applications. Bo Cooper, a former general counsel at USCISâs predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said he believed the agency was âwell-equippedâ to implement the actions â saying it would use DACA as a model. âThe immigration agencies are built to have a capacity to scale,â Cooper said, arguing that because the agency is funded by application fees, it will have more money and resources as more applications come in.