Massive Overhaul of Immigration Services Planned

MoonHowler

Finally! And to those who have repeatedly said ‘our immigration laws are fine, just enforce them,’ I say, “Enforce this!’

The Washington Post reports on 11/6/08:

The Bush administration has launched a massive overhaul of the nation’s long-troubled immigration services agency, tapping an IBM-led industry consortium to re-invent the way government workers help immigrants obtain visas, seek citizenship and get approval to work in the United States.

Apparently things began to clog right after the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. Our immigration system became broken, despite the fact that over 22,000 workers were attacking the problem on antiquated systems and equipment in 250 locations.

The contract, awarded this week and the largest federal homeland security bid on the market, includes a $14.5 million, 90-day assessment period with options over five years worth $491.1 million, and a ceiling value of up to $3.5 billion if Congress approves a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that unleashes a flood of applications for legal status or other actions.

Many things have hampered updating this new system for USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services): funding, departmental infighting, the focus on ‘the wall,’ border crossing issues, increased security demands, inertia and unpassed bills.

The USCIS transformation effort is a long-awaited, much delayed undertaking that is years behind initial schedule yet considered a cornerstone of any broader effort to fix an immigration system all sides say is one of the most broken bureaucracies in the federal government.
The agency, which was spun off from the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services and merged into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, receives about 6 million to 8 million applications from immigrants a year, but relies on a pre-computer age, paper-based system of 70 million files identified by immigrants’ “A-numbers” or alien registration numbers.

Good for President Bush for making sure that our immigration system gets fixed. By the same token, why wasn’t fixing immigration prioritized years ago? Especially after 9/11, when security was at its pinnacle, why were workers tracking people manually. If we could put man on the moon in 1969 using computers, how come we can’t process immigration requests?

Just think of the problems that would have never happened if our existing immigration system was not broken.

click the Washington Post link above for the full story and thanks to TWINAD for sending this article.

Stewart’s Sabotage of McCain in PWC

Alanna

Chairman Stewart,
It was not the illegal immigration issue that hurt John McCain in Prince William County it WAS YOU. You were unable to set aside your differences with McCain and work for the common good of the party. You were supposed to be campaigning for McCain, instead the day before the election you’re tearing him down talking about his mistakes and what he should have done. In fact, you sounded defeated in the comments that you made on TooConservative.net. I’d suggest watching what the Democrats were doing on Monday night. They obviously energized their electorate. Guess what, that was your job to do but nothing that I’ve seen remotely suggests that you even attempted to do that.

Republicans should be asking themselves whether or not Chairman Stewart worked on behalf of the Party to elect John McCain or if his disagreement with him on the issue of ‘illegal immigration’ caused him to sabotage McCain’s campaign in Prince William. Personally, I tend to believe this argument holds some credence and apparently I’m not the only one.

From TooConservative.net, we have the following:

First,

As a PWC Republican I’ve been dismayed at your failure to show the level of support for the McCain-Palin Ticket that is so vital in PWC.
If McCain doesn’t Win PWC why shouldn’t us Republican’s in PWC not hold a Recall?
– PWConservative

And secondly,

Mr. Stewart-
I have to say I agree with PW Conservative. Although I have never met you personally, every quote I have seen from you lately in the press has been negative about our ticket i.e. McCain hasn’t focused enough on illegal immigration and it will hurt him and McCain didn’t give me a big enough role at his rally. How can you justify such tepid support? As “The Preiminent Northern Virginia Republican” (I believe this is also a self-appointed title by you), we need your full support, not your snipping and backbiting. Please take the opportunity to defend yourself if I am being unfair here.
– Huh?

Followed by Chairman Stewart’s responses:

Gus,
I believe the McCain campaign could have piggy backed on that success by more closely aligning itself with the PWC Board and our crackdown on illegal immigration. It chose not to do so. I think that was a mistake given that the local voters rewarded the Board with reelection after we imposed the crackdown. I understand that McCain has a national electorate and has decided to avoid the illegal immigration issue on a national level. This will, however, hurt him in PWC tomorrow.
– Corey Stewart