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."
"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."
I believe, that if allowed, we could easily find thousands of concerned conservatives who would gladly descend on those Missouri warehouses and field offices and organize those files into a workable database. It would not be necessary to complete this assignment before making accumulated results available. All we would need is access, leadership and the assurance that resulting files be made quickly available to all law enforcement agencies.
Ping!
Rest assured, your gov't is at work solving ALL the alien problems that surface (/sarc). For example, this letter to the editor appeared in an East Coast newspaper.
Dear Editor: Your readers may be interested in a federal initiative on this important subject (trafficking in sex). As many as 18,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. every year. To help these victims, the Bush Administration launched a program called "Rescue and Restore" to identify trafficking victims, then provide them with access to shelter, legal assistance, job training and health care so they can establish lives free of violence and exploitation. "Rescue and Restore" has a toll-free number (888-3737-888) to report suspected cases of trafficking and a Web site, www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/. Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery that we all must work to eradicate. With the help of concerned citizens, we can rescue those enslaved by this, restore their dignity and worth and end this barbaric practice.
Wade F. Horn
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
WASHINGTON, D.C.
I would like to hear Mr Chertoff on this. His testimony on such things is a lot more sophisticated than most comments. This makes me think someone is doing something right, "at 420,000 cases. In January 2004, it was 3.8 million cases behind"
MONEY...Thats all you need to know.
This is what Pis..s me off so much about pork barrel spending. We are paying for bridges to nowhere and all that other ridiculous crap when the $$ could be spent on necessary things. GRRR!
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