I was once a records-manager for the now-defunct Immigration & Naturalization (it is part of Homeland Security now; back then, it was part of the U.S. Department of Justice).
It was my observation that "asylum examiners" in Immigration & Naturalization were rather more interested in assembling around the water-cooler at the office, discussing the latest Chicago Cubs baseball game, than they were in doing their job.....jobs for which they were very well paid.
Many of them never even bothered reading files carefully and painstakingly assembled by petitioners; it was just more fun to play "Solitaire" on the office computer.....again, despite that they were very well paid, and they were very fortunate indeed to have jobs that demanded only reading, no other work.
The rest of us could be so lucky.
Whether one is pro-immigrant, anti-immigrant, or somewhere in between, one has to admit such is a tremendous waste of taxpayer money, bureaucratic inertia and non-work.
It was in the mid-1990s that immigration attorneys began frankly advising asylum applicants that the process for asylum was merely a wasteful and time-consuming facade that had to be endured; that one just had to have the patience to last it out, until an appeal could be filed in a court.
I do not know how it is now, but at least then, circa ten years ago, the attitude was, that while a bureaucrat never paid attention to documentation, judges were conscientious about it, and gave the applicant his first fair hearing.
A waste of taxpayers' money, having all these people on the payroll not bothering to apply the clearly-stated laws of the land.
Won't it be fun when half of the 12 million illegals file appellate cases over the implementaion of the "temporary work visa" program?
When five million illegals enter this country every year and have been doing so for at least a decade, just how far does the judiciary have to have it's head up it's arse to think the illegal problem wouldn't land in their lap sooner or later?
Excellent observations and comments, franksolich, thank you for sharing them with us.
You're one of the reasons FR is such a great place...FReepers come from all walks of life and have a wealth of information and experience relevant to today's issues.
Former INS Clerk Convicted Of Shredding Records To Reduce Backlog
December 19, 2003
A federal jury in Santa Ana, Calif., convicted a former INS contract clerical worker on Wednesday of two counts of destruction of government documents for shredding paperwork to reduce a backlog and protect his job. Leonel Salazar, 34, was acquitted of three other counts of destruction and a conspiracy charge. He faces up to six years in prison when he is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Alicemarie Stotler on April 12, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Staples.
Prosecutors said Salazar, a former file room senior supervisor at the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Laguna Niguel, Calif. — now known as the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services — shredded the papers to reduce a 90,000-document backlog and save his job. The documents included passports, birth and marriage certificates and other vital records of immigrants that were supposed to be attached to active files, according to trial testimony.
Salazar was accused of conspiring with Dawn Randall, assistant manager of the file room, but the jury acquitted him of that count. Randall is scheduled to be tried March 16 on the same charges of conspiracy and five counts of destruction of documents.
Defense attorneys for Salazar argued during the trial that he believed the paperwork amounted to non-essential records that usually would be destroyed to hide personal information such as names. Salazar worked for SEI Technology, a private company hired by the INS to file applications for permanent residency, citizenship, work visas and family reunification.
Note: I haven't found any articles regarding a trial for Dawn Randall.
Thank you for your insight. It appears that we need the private sector to actually do the reading. The government could pay them. The agency you mentioned must be shut down, the spoiled lard-brains layed off. Then we start up a new oversight agency that makes sure the business-run agents do their jobs correctly. Government is much better at oversight than at actually working. That power rush they get seems to motivate them more.