Kris Kobach, writing for the New York Post, points out the biggest problem with the immigration reform bill being debated in Congress, the "sheer impossibility of implementing it". After reading the bill proposed last year I came to the same conclusion and this bill is no different, in fact it's probably worse. Congress is really good at coming up with more and more responsibilities for our already over-burdened agencies. Remember the hearings on Katrina? The moral outrage expressed by our elected representatives and the grilling officials at the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA received from the very people who voted for the bureaucratic mess in the first place? Here is a quote from a National Review article written by Kate O'Beirne and Richard Lowry in the May 22, 2006 issue:
When DHS's dysfunction played into the chaotic response to Hurricane Katrina, Congress turned around and excoriated the people in charge of the unmanageable department it itself had created. Being in Congress means never having to own up to your own errors when you can browbeat other people over them during televised hearings instead. Blame always rolls off Capitol Hill onto someone else.
The bottom line here is that Congress is really good at passing laws and really bad at understanding the consequences. Kobach's column should be faxed, mailed, emailed and crammed down the throat of any Senator who votes for this monstrosity:
ONE of the biggest - and least discussed - problems with the immigration bill now before the Senate is the sheer impossibility of implementing it.
The measure would triple the workload at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services - an agency that the Government Accountability Office says is already at the breaking point. It's an invitation not only to fraud, but to any terrorist group or criminal gang that's looking to insert minions into America.
Kobach accurately calls the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services a "bureaucratic sweatshop":
The agency is stretched to the breaking point, according to a 2006 study by the federal Government Accountability Office. That report noted that, because adjudicators must go through so many applications for benefits (for green cards, asylum and much more) every day, they spend too little time scrutinizing them. As a result, the GAO concluded, failure to detect fraud is already "an ongoing and serious problem."
(Is Congress not paying attention here? Morons.)
The back-breaking workload results in what the GAO calls a "high pressure production environment." It is widely known that an unofficial "six-minute rule" applies - spend no more than six minutes looking at any single application.
It's a bureaucratic sweatshop. Adjudicators told the GAO that their managers were consumed with meeting "production goals," driving the workers to process applications too quickly and increasing the risk of undetected fraud. Cash rewards are even given to the adjudicators who can work the fastest.
And there's this:
So let's assume (conservatively) that 12 million illegals apply for the amnesty within the year allowed. Since the federal government is open for business 250 days a year, there will be an average of 48,000 amnesty applications every day.
USCIS now has about 3,000 "adjudicators" - the caseworkers who'd have to process the Z-visa applications. The Senate bill would only add 100 a year for five years - "subject to the availability of appropriations." And it wouldn't be easy to expand the force much faster, due to the difficulty of hiring and training new adjudicators.
So, we have 3,000 people hit with 48,000 applications a day. Of course, on some days - or in some offices - the number could easily double. And with each application, the adjudicator has only one day to determine if the alien is a criminal or a national security threat.
It gets worse. Those numbers assume that the adjudicators aren't already busy. In fact, they're swamped.
IN FY 2005, USCIS received 6.3 million applications - on top of a backlog of several million unresolved applications.
Folks, we have some real geniuses in Congress.
Comments