Posted on 06/17/2006 6:37:26 AM PDT by devane617
WASHINGTON - They are called the Alien Files - or simply, the "A-Files."
There are 55 million of them, each up to hundreds of pages thick, stashed in a government warehouse in Missouri.
Though they detail no science-fiction secrets of UFO landings or beings from distant planets, they can prove an irritating mystery to those who need them most - immigration officers deciding who can stay in the United States.
The "aliens" are people from other countries seeking work permits, residency or citizenship. The records contain their applications, photos and fingerprints.
Each time an immigration officer weighs an outsider's destiny, the file must be found and shipped back and forth between 89 field offices and the warehouse.
There is so much paper, such an outmoded tracking system and so many newcomers waiting for word that just keeping up has proved impossible for immigration authorities, years of government reports show - a troubling sign as Washington weighs legitimizing millions of illegal immigrants.
Government insiders, despite decades of effort, still are struggling to catch up from a massive case backlog - while balancing worries over criminal deception and, since Sept. 11, terrorists slipping through.
Now they have another big worry: political promises.
As Congress wrangles over whether to crack down on illegal immigration or welcome guest workers and offer paths to citizenship, little-noticed in the debate is the inability of the already-crippled U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to cope with a new tide of up to 12 million illegal immigrants seeking work permits or a path to citizenship.
Immigration legislation championed by Mel Martinez, the Republican U.S. senator from Florida, and now being pushed by President Bush would add to the agency's burden - without providing the money to make it work.
Chris Bentley, a spokesman for the immigration agency, acknowledges that lawmakers have been briefed on the shortfall between what the agency may be asked to do and what it can accomplish.
Who Will Cover $1 Billion Cost? The disconnect long has been recognized by government inspectors and the agency itself. Agency director Emilio Gonzalez, a lawyer and former partner of politically connected Miami firm Tew Cardenas, privately discussed it with Martinez.
Martinez, a Cuban-American who as the Senate's only immigrant has made immigration a centerpiece of his recent labors on the Hill, acknowledges the need for more money to do the job - he estimates $750 million to $1 billion.
"It needs to be budgeted. It needs to be appropriated," he said Friday, agreeing it wasn't part of the bill or current discussions.
There's nothing unusual about Congress placing fresh burdens on bureaucracies without providing money or details on how to accomplish the tasks it assigns.
Sometimes money is budgeted later, sometimes not at all. Bentley said he knew of no plans for an appropriation large enough to accommodate millions of new immigrants.
"The U.S. Congress is the only place in the world where you do not have to consider reality," said Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA, a Virginia-based group against more immigration.
The irony is that the agency, which used to be called the Immigration and Naturalization Service and now is part of the Department of Homeland Security, finally has made some headway with its backlog, now at 420,000 cases. In January 2004, it was 3.8 million cases behind.
Experimental efforts to digitize some of the paper records, at an anticipated cost of $190 million over eight years, has bogged down. A larger transformation, including an overhaul of computer tracking software, also is years from completion.
Nobody is sure of the cost. Just scanning and electronically storing the forms now in Missouri could cost $550 million, according to March estimates by the General Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress.
Sheer volume is so great that, in the pilot project to digitize the Alien Files, bureaucrats evidently are having a hard time even choosing where to start, the GAO said.
Bentley, the Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, acknowledged the lack of resources. "I don't know anybody who will say that, with what we have, we could add 11 [million] or 12 million cases and be able to pull it off," he said.
Congress is struggling to reconcile the House measure that emphasizes enforcement with the Senate version, which would allow 12 million illegal immigrants to come out of the shadows. If the Senate version prevails, Bentley's agency would have to interview all undocumented immigrants. Even a smaller flow of immigrants would complicate the agency's job.
GAO Blasts Records System The agency's backlog has a human impact. One GAO report noted delays caused "hardships for immigrants, their families, and prospective employers seeking immigrant workers." Those who make decisions about requests for work permits, citizenship and other benefits, culling through about 50 different forms, must know five to 17 different passwords to obtain the information they need.
In one of the more recent official reports, issued in September, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, Richard L. Skinner, warned that "processing immigration benefits continues to be inefficient, hindering [the immigration agency's] ability to carry out its mission." Rather than use integrated technology, now common in the corporate world and much of government, the immigration agency uses methods from the pre-computer era.
"Processes are primarily manual, paper-based, and duplicative, resulting in ineffective use of human and finance resources to ship, store and track immigration files," the inspector general concluded.
Just moving A-files between the Missouri records center and government offices where they are needed costs about $13 million each year.
"This is constantly a problem for immigration lawyers," said Crystal Williams, deputy director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, whose 10,000 members help workers and families seeking entry to the United States. "If someone moves, just getting the fact a person has moved into the file is a gargantuan task. There's no database. It's all by case number. It takes a very long time."
Advocacy groups opposed to bringing large numbers of immigrants into the open have tried to capitalize on the agency's shortcomings.
If the current immigration level "causes the system to bust at the seams, what will millions more do?" said Steven A. Camarota, research director of the Center for Immigration Studies, whose nonprofit seeks a more moderate flow of immigrants.
"Congress isn't known for being tuned in to bureaucratic capacity, but this is so out of whack it's hard to understand," Camarota said. "Just to ask the system to do its job now would require astronomical amounts of money - at least $2 billion."
Whistleblower Alleges Shortcuts Perhaps more alarming, some insiders are warning of the greater potential for fraud and threats that terrorists could slip more easily through the overwhelmed system. Bogus documents could be harder to detect.
Michael Maxwell, former director of the agency's Office of Security and Investigations, said that in the drive to reduce the backlog, the agency had conferred citizenship and other benefits to people without background checks.
The Homeland Security Department's inspector general is investigating reports by Maxwell and others that immigration employees skipped fingerprint checks, issued duplicate green cards and may have been bribed.
Maxwell, a whistleblower who quit in February, said that with legislation on the radar, agency director Gonzalez had pressured him to hire temporary workers so the agency would be positioned to process millions of new applications within nine months.
Maxwell resisted. "I pushed documents forward saying this was completely unrealistic," he said. "I mean, we're in serious trouble. We're going to have to deal with the consequences of a failed immigration system. There are vulnerabilities and loopholes you can drive a truck through."
Agency spokesman Bentley responded: "We will never do anything that would ever compromise the immigration system. Allegations that we are lax in national security or in completing background checks are not accurate."
"...Perhaps more alarming, some insiders are warning of the greater potential for fraud and threats that terrorists could slip more easily through the overwhelmed system. Bogus documents could be harder to detect.
Michael Maxwell, former director of the agency's Office of Security and Investigations, said that in the drive to reduce the backlog, the agency had conferred citizenship and other benefits to people without background checks.
The Homeland Security Department's inspector general is investigating reports by Maxwell and others that immigration employees skipped fingerprint checks, issued duplicate green cards and may have been bribed.
Maxwell, a whistleblower who quit in February, said that with legislation on the radar, agency director Gonzalez had pressured him to hire temporary workers so the agency would be positioned to process millions of new applications within nine months.
Maxwell resisted. "I pushed documents forward saying this was completely unrealistic," he said. "I mean, we're in serious trouble. We're going to have to deal with the consequences of a failed immigration system. There are vulnerabilities and loopholes you can drive a truck through..."
Ping SwinneySwitch
Anyone remember the Grace Commission?
This is the elephant in the room or the dirty little secret. The bureaucratic apparatus neceessary to implement the Senate plan or the Pence plan is enormous. There is a total lack of understanding by the general public that there will need to be a major increase in USG staffing to implement comprehensive immigration reform and we don't have enough people now to do the current job.
Perfect example of why government should be the LAST choice to run something.
Simple business 101. Figure out the average time to process the average application. Set a reasonable pay scale for application examiners along with a reasonable number of supervisors. Now if you have "X" number of applications you can determine how many people you need and a reasonably accurate estimate of the cost to process. Divide the cost to process by the number of applicants add a bit of a cushion and gee Bat Man you now have the appropriate APPLICATION FEE. It fricken pays for itself and the US Taxpayer does not have to finance their own job elimination.
Estúpido.
Even that will take a huge new bureaucracy. You just can't process 12 to 20 million people that quickly, especially when there are 6 million legal immigrants in line now. All of this is just a scam to legalize the illegals and say that the problem is solved. It is a replay of 1986.
Bush is not stupid, he knows this is unworkable and it will give him just the excuse he wants to grow the Government even bigger. He is NOT a conservative.
BUMP
ping
Then, there is the additional 100 million or so we plan to let in and naturalize at the same time...
From personal experience, I know our legal immigration system is already overwhelmed and hardly functional. Adding this kind of a burden will ensure it never gets up off the mat - and neither will the United States of America after the economic costs, cultural chaos, bureaucratic catastrophes and unmitigated lawbreaking overwhelm us and turn us into just another turd world country.
Whats really sickening is that even if the paper files were computerized the system wouldn't work... I worked for 12 years at a defense contractors datacenter that did outside work for the IRS and the BIA among other gov't agencies... to save money they did their own datamanagement (backups , database maint, etc...) I know of at least 3 occasions where the BIA lost serious amounts of data that was unrecoverable from backups ... they were simply incompetent.
The way gov't builds things this'll just be a huge kluge ... similar to NASA's computer network ... just add one system at a time as needed for a specific function , never look at the whole... bids are awarded to the low bidder who bids just enough brand X equipment to do the job.. 3 years later when a new (but related) project comes up for bid brand Y is awarded the contract ... soon you end up with 6 different sets of incompatable hardware and software and the 3 oldest need replacing ... Until 1991 it took a week to get an answer on a simple inquiry into when part 12345 was last replaced... and that was if some 1960's computer didn't break down... they eliminated the hardware worries in 1993 by simulating the 40 year old tech as seperate virtual machines on a single large IBM computer running CMS..
Headway means the cases were pushed through the systems without the proper checks or compliances.
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