The acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which processes forms such as citizenship paperwork, said the agency is quickly running out of cash due to a drop in applications and may be forced to seek more than $1 billion from Congress, BuzzFeed News reports. “So far, the White House has yet to officially ask for the funding, raising questions as to whether it will back the request, according to a source with knowledge of the matter,” the report said.
It would be reasonable to point to USCIS office closures amid the pandemic as a reason for a loss in revenue for the self-funded agency, but at the same time, the Trump administration has fought tooth and nail to stifle legal immigration, so it may be getting exactly what is wants. The approaching emergency “is no accident,” former USCIS Chief Counsel and DHS Watch Director Ur Jaddou said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda has run USCIS into the ground.”
“The agency’s place in the immigration system is integral,” BuzzFeed News said. “USCIS officers provide work permits, conduct initial asylum screenings that determine whether immigrants can make their case for protection in the US, and issue green cards and naturalizations, among other tasks.” But as Jaddou notes, radical Trump administration policies—including moves stomping on the right to ask for asylum—have helped lead to a significant drop in applications.
“There are multiple policies that simply lock immigrants out from even applying, which decreases the amount of money coming into the agency,” Jaddou said. “There are multiple policies that make it harder and longer for legal immigrants and naturalization applicants to be adjudicated, many with little or no justification, but requiring more resources and time to adjudicate. And then there’s USCIS using its resources—paid by customers for efficient processing of forms—to fund enforcement normally reserved for ICE and the Department of Justice.”
”So it’s no surprise that with overspending on restrictive policies, fewer people able to access legal immigration and pay fees, and misuse of funds for enforcement, the agency is now broke,” Jaddou continues. USCIS has historically been a paper-pushing agency that has in fact been slowly radicalized under this administration.
Under the impeached president, former director L. Francis Cissna infamously stripped the description of the U.S. as “a nation of immigrants” from the agency’s mission statement, and appeared at an event hosted by an anti-immigrant hate group. He was followed by an even worse character named Ken Cuccinelli, a loudmouthed bigot who once compared immigrants to rodents and giddily promoted Trump’s ICE raids even though they had nothing to do with his job. Ken was eventually found by a federal judge to have been unlawfully appointed to his job.
The fact is that Congress should save USCIS because the work of USCIS has always been vital. This is the agency that processes the paperwork of asylum-seekers and immigrants who seek to make America their home, and its these same families who have made America what it is. That’s also the reason why a scenario where the future of USCIS is at risk is no accident.
“It’s clear that the goal of the Trump administration is to extinguish legal immigration by starving USCIS of operating funds largely derived from immigrants and US businesses who pay the agency fees for immigration benefit applications,” DHS Watch counsel David Leopold said. “Congress must throw USCIS a lifeline so that legal immigration, as duly enacted by Congress, continues. At the same time, Congress must ensure that the Trump administration cannot continue to take actions aimed at breaking the legal immigration system.”