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2004
FAMILIES AND BUSINESSES IN LIMBO: THE DETRIMENTAL IMPACT OF THE IMMIGRATION BACKLOG
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION,
BORDER SECURITY, AND CLAIMS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JUNE 17 AND 23, 2004
Serial No. 96
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/judiciary
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., Wisconsin, Chairman
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
LAMAR SMITH, Texas
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin
RIC KELLER, Florida
MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
MIKE PENCE, Indiana
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
STEVE KING, Iowa
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas
TOM FEENEY, Florida
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
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JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
JERROLD NADLER, New York
ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia
MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina
ZOE LOFGREN, California
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
MAXINE WATERS, California
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
LINDA T. SÁNCHEZ, California
PHILIP G. KIKO, Chief of Staff-General Counsel
PERRY H. APELBAUM, Minority Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana, Chairman
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
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LAMAR SMITH, Texas
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
STEVE KING, Iowa
MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
LINDA T. SÁNCHEZ, California
ZOE LOFGREN, California
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan
GEORGE FISHMAN, Chief Counsel
ART ARTHUR, Full Committee Counsel
LUKE BELLOCCHI, Counsel
CINDY BLACKSTON, Professional Staff
NOLAN RAPPAPORT, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
HEARING DATES
June 17, 2004
June 23, 2004
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OPENING STATEMENT
June 17, 2004
The Honorable John N. Hostettler, a Representative in Congress From the State of Indiana, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims
The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative in Congress From the State of Texas, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims
The Honorable Steve King, a Representative in Congress From the State of Iowa
The Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress From the State of California
The Honorable Linda T. Sánchez, a Representative in Congress From the State of California
June 23, 2004
The Honorable John N. Hostettler, a Representative in Congress From the State of Indiana, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims
The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative in Congress From the State of Texas, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims
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WITNESSES
June 17, 2004
The Honorable Eduardo Aguirre, Jr., Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Oral Testimony
Prepared Statement
June 23, 2004
The Honorable Prakash Khatri, Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Oral Testimony
Prepared Statement
Ms. Elizabeth Espin Stern, Managing Partner, Business Immigration Practice Group, Shaw Pittman, LLC
Oral Testimony
Prepared Statement
Mr. Paul Zulkie, President, American Immigration Lawyers Association
Oral Testimony
Prepared Statement
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APPENDIX
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
June 17, 2004
Backlog Elimination Plan submitted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative in Congress From the State of Texas, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress From the State of California
Letter to U.S. CIS Director Eduardo Aguirre submitted by the Honorable Zoe Lofgren
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Linda T. Sánchez, a Representative in Congress From the State of California
Letter to President George W. Bush and the Honorable Tom Ridge, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, submitted by the Honorable Linda T. Sánchez
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Letter to Robert Bonner, Commissioner, Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, submitted by the Honorable Linda T. Sánchez
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Steve King, a Representative in Congress From the State of Iowa
June 23, 2004
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative in Congress From the State of Texas, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims
Letter from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), submitted by Paul Zulkie
Letter to the Honorable Eduardo Aguirre, Jr., Director, Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS), submitted by Paul Zulkie
Response to Questions submitted by Rep. Anthony Weiner to the Honorable Prakash Khatri
Response to Questions submitted by Rep. Anthony Weiner to Ms. Elizabeth Stern
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Response to Questions submitted by Rep. Anthony Weiner to Mr. Paul Zulkie
FAMILIES AND BUSINESSES IN LIMBO: THE DETRIMENTAL IMPACT OF THE IMMIGRATION BACKLOG
THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Immigration,
Border Security, and Claims,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:07 p.m., in Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John N. Hostettler (Chair of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. The Subcommittee will come to order.
''We applaud those immigrants who stand out, men and women who labored all their lives so that their children would be well-fed, families that went through great hardship yet kept their honor, their dignity, and their faith in God.''
Those are the words of President Ronald Reagan, who the Nation bid farewell to last week. Today, the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims will examine a quite different subject from our last oversight hearing. Instead of reviewing the tools needed to combat illegal human smuggling into the United States, we will examine the plight of those legal immigrants working through the immigration and petition process and those seeking to naturalize. Those aliens who follow the law and dutifully apply for immigration status with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, should not be stranded in legal limbo while waiting for the 6.2 million petition backlog to be cleared. This is especially the case for those patiently waiting abroad for their legitimate immigration applications to be approved. Some families have been kept apart as alien relatives abroad have had to wait for USCIS to adjudicate the petition paperwork. In some cases, petitions sit in a pile for literally years, and applicants must periodically refile certain items, like fingerprints, as they expire. And when I talk about expiring, I mean the applications, not the applicants.
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American companies have also suffered. American multinationals file papers with USCIS to bring employees from abroad or to hire graduates of American universities. One must ask what incentive there is for aliens abroad to make legal applications for entry only to wait lengthy periods in the backlog.
The immigration backlog also harms our national security. A recent General Accounting Office study describes how poor visa overstay tracking complicates efforts to ensure domestic security. Indeed, we have seen how 9/11 terrorists took advantage of backlogs, workload, and poor record checks to remain undetected and undisturbed in the U.S. A recent Nixon Center study indicates that the al Qaeda terrorist network has used and continues its strategies of using national immigration systems to place operatives. In fact, 7 percent of all applications processed result in an initial security or criminal hit of some sort. But if checks are not processed for years, dangerous aliens may roam free in our communities here in the United States.
We must continue to be ever vigilant and current in all immigration processing so that we have readily accessible information on foreign travelers and workers who are in the United States. While the immigration backlog was current in fiscal year 1994, various subsequent immigration programs, such as the 245(i) programs and the expedited naturalization Citizenship USA program, have helped create and increase the backlog to its current state of over 6 million petitions. Some argue that the backlog is only half that size because half of the petitions are completed within 6 months. Others point to the 77 percent increase in the number of petitions filed with USCIS from 1993 to 2001 and inadequate funding.
Many critics have placed the blame on USCIS tardiness in increasing fees to match requirements. Others point to bureaucratic and needless paper exercises, such as returns for evidence in the petition process. Still others point to ''overfunded and underperforming'' data systems to help manage work flow.
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To solve these problems, the President has set a goal to reduce the backlog by fiscal year 2006 to a no-longer-than-6-months response time on immigration petitions.
Our primary guest today is the Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Honorable Eduardo Aguirre. He will be presenting the long-awaited USCIS plan to take control of adjudication backlogs. I appreciate the importance Mr. Aguirre has placed on this issue and eagerly look forward to his presentation today.
At this time the Chair recognizes the Ranking Member from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, for the purposes of an opening statement.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I believe that everyone will give 100 percent acclamation and affirmation that this is a very important hearing.
The Honorable Barbara Jordan once said, ''When they ask what do we want, the simple question is America's promise.'' The ''we'' can be anyone. It can certainly be those of us who have come to this country from different walks of life, recognizing Director Aguirre, who has had his own personal story to tell. There are any number of ''we's'' but the question is America's promise is embedded in democracy and fairness and clear procedures and transparency. And so I would simply say that today should be a pronouncement of our recommitment to democracy and fairness and certainly transparency.
As I look at a typical day at USCIS, I see 140,000 national security background checks, 80,000 calls at four national customer service centers, and maybe the ability to process 80,000—or 30,000 applications. But what this does not reflect is the enormous backlog and frustration of families and those who are seeking legal access to legalization and status adjustment.
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What we don't see is a young lady who I heard from just about 72 hours ago, who said, ''I get about three or four letters, if you will, put out by computers, very smart computers, who continuously suggest, 'Your fingerprints are not in.' '' Well, her fingerprints have been in. It has not yet been communicated to the computer, and she remains on the list of a very long, long list.
And so I would say that all of us have a very personal interest in eliminating the immigration benefits applications backlog because we want to see America's promise work every day. Houston's backlog on benefits applications is one of the longest in the country, longer than Boston, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Approximately 50,000 people in Houston, in the Houston area, are waiting for the processing of an immigration benefit application. For some, the wait has been as long as 5 years.
Bianca Springer has a graduate degree in conflict analysis and resolution. Last week, as she and her husband, Jerry, sat in an office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, she said that she should have pursued a degree in bureaucracy. She has been trying unsuccessfully to resolve issues around her immigration application since moving to Houston from Miami 18 months ago, where she originally filed the paperwork. She sees no end in sight. She has not even been able to confirm that her files are at the Houston office.
Again, this reflection of bureaucracy, Mr. Chairman, and to the witness, Director Aguirre, is not a reflection on staff that works hard every day. It is a reflection on the system, and it is a reflection particularly on securing the homeland and our capability of doing so.
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People also are experiencing difficulty in learning about the status of their applications. Mr. Al Rashid is a retired executive with Saudi Aramco, an energy company. In 2002, after taking an early retirement, he moved from Saudi Arabia to Houston with his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, and their infant son. Two years ago, more than $7,000 later, he still doesn't know his status. He has asked, ''I want to start a business. Am I going to be approved or not? Shall I pack up my family and go or stay?''
New York is another place that is having serious backlog problems. The backlog of pending citizenship cases in New York exceeds 100,000 which is more than any other district in the country. A letter summoning Errol Taylor to be sworn in as a citizen on May 14 arrived at his Flatbush home more than a year after his interview and 2 years after he applied for citizenship. This was too late for Mr. Taylor, a hospital worker who had lived and worked in Brooklyn for decades after leaving Trinidad in 1975, because he had died in March.
The costs and consequences of the delays go beyond personal heartache. Businesses that rely on foreign professionals are facing logistical headaches and added legal costs to maintain their workforces. Some came to me just a few days ago about the inadequacy now of H1–B, another legal status visa. Family members sponsoring a relative have died while the process dragged on. Senior citizens, 70, 85, 82, 90 years old, who are seeking their citizenship status, are too being delayed, maybe beyond their life span.
Some immigrants have inadvertently lapsed into illegal illegality because work permits or other papers have expired. Part of the problem is that additional security checks have been implemented in reaction to 9/11. Before 9/11, the Government only ran security checks on some kinds of immigration applicants such as those seeking citizenship. Now every applicant must undergo security screening, which has caused the workload to bloom. Also, matches on FBI name checks cause substantial delays when paper files must be checked to determine whether benefits—whether the benefits applicant is a person in the FBI files. While name matches only occur in a small percentage of the applications, we've also seen a rise in the number of applications. FY 2001 was the peak year for the number of immigration and naturalization petitions filed, 7.8 million, but we've seen these numbers go up. I would only argue that this is a time now for a pronounced benefits package to be bipartisan, to be truly committed by—committed to by the Administration, and, of course, to be implemented as quickly as possible.
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I realize that we are part, I hope, of the solution, meaning the United States Congress, and I realize, frankly, that we have a very large task. In the backdrop of the 9/11 hearings and the report that will be coming out, there's enough blame for all of us. The tragedy of that occurrence, the loss of life, and the inadequate procedures that we all have come to understand make this hearing, Mr. Chairman, one of the most important in this United States Congress. I believe in securing the homeland, but you've heard me say it before: Immigration does not equate to terrorism, and we are a Nation of immigrants and of laws.
Today, I hope that we will commit ourselves to those virtues, be able to secure the homeland, recognize the crisis, and address those who are in need of access to legalization with the human dignity and America's promise.
I yield back my time.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Ms. Jackson Lee.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. King, for 5 minutes for purposes of an opening statement.
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding this hearing today, and I look forward to Mr. Aguirre's testimony.
I would just make several points here in reflection on some of the opening remarks and in anticipation of the testimony and the questions that we'll bring forward, and that is that—two points that I'm concerned about, and one of them is that we want to honor and respect the people who honor and respect our laws, and that means we need to expedite their applications consistent with our laws. That's one way that we can encourage people to follow the legal path to come into the United States as opposed to the illegal path. We need to do that without jeopardizing our homeland security and our national defense. All nations are nations of immigrants. All nations need to control their borders. This process that we're looking at here today has that in mind as well, and I believe it's important for us to consider the issue of amnesty and how that affects the overtaxation of the system if that policy should move forward.
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So those are the things I have in mind, and I think it's important that we—that we accelerate a legitimate, careful program of processing our people, and at the same time we can only do it at the rate that we can assimilate them into our society.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Mr. King.
The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms. Lofgren, for 5 minutes for purposes of an opening statement.
Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Jackson Lee, for holding this hearing, and I'd also like to thank the Director, Mr. Aguirre, for coming to join us today to go through the plan for the reduction of the backlog.
Since I have been a Member of this Subcommittee, which, unfortunately, now goes over many years, I have endeavored to work on this issue with a variety of Commissioners and now the Director, because the backlog is a serious problem for real people. Most recently, 44 Members of Congress, bipartisan Members of Congress, including Subcommittee Members, Congresswoman Blackburn and Congressman Flake and Congressman Hart and Mr. Berman and Ms. Sánchez, wrote to you, Mr. Aguirre, talking about the severity of the backlog program in—problem. And in my home State of California, I think it's quite severe, and it goes—it runs the gamut from family members separated from each other to Nobel Prize winners who are stuck, and we need them here.
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So there are actual hardships that are being undertaken or experienced by American citizens, and also certainly our economy that is denied the best and brightest that are stuck outside the United States. I am frustrated that even today we are not fully implementing the technology that needs to be implemented. And I've said not only to you but to your predecessors that we can't just work harder, we need to work smarter in order to get ahead of this situation. I know that we are still issuing millions of paper I–94s. We should have a system that is entirely computerized, and I believe that you share that goal.
I can recall a number of years ago asking how much money would be necessary to implement this because we don't need necessarily to design new systems. We need to acquire them and deploy them.
So I am eager to hear your plan. We just got it this morning so I haven't had a chance to review it yet. But I'm eager to hear your comments and to pose any questions that your comments raise for us. And I would ask unanimous consent to submit my full statement for the record, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Without objection.
Ms. LOFGREN. I yield back.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentlelady.
Now the introduction of our panelist: Mr. Eduardo Aguirre became the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on August 15, 2003. Prior to his appointment, he served the Administration as Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. In the private sector, he became president of International Private Banking for the Bank of America and ran a highly profitable unit.
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Then-Governor Bush appointed Mr. Aguirre to the Board of Regents of the University of Houston System, and he served as its chairman from 1996 to 1998. Mr. Aguirre earned a bachelor of science degree from the College of Business Administration at Louisiana State University. He is a graduate of the American Bankers Association's National Commercial Lending Graduate School and was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Houston.
Director Aguirre, I ask that you now stand and raise your right hand.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Dr. Aguirre.
Please let the record reflect that the witness responded in the affirmative, and you are recognized.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE EDUARDO AGUIRRE, DIRECTOR, U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. AGUIRRE. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Jackson Lee, and Members of the Subcommittee. Today I will report to you on the progress that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, USCIS, has made in its initial 15 months and the ambitious goals that we will reach in the months and years ahead. The Backlog Elimination Plan, which was submitted to Congress yesterday, reaffirms our commitment to eliminating the backlog while enhancing national security and improving customer service. This commitment is not just one of words, but one of action. Since my appointment and confirmation as the first ever Director of USCIS, I have tasked our leadership to immediately review our processes, identify opportunities for streamlining and further improvement, and begin to implement meaningful change.
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To say that this has been a year of change for our agency would be an understatement of great proportions. In the past 15 months, USCIS brought together components of the former INS to create a new, energized, cohesive agency with a single vision: ''To provide the right benefit to the right person in the right amount of time, and prevent the wrong person from accessing immigration benefits.''
You see, Mr. Chairman, I understand the importance of this vision and of the changes that we're making as I am a product of the immigration system. I came to this country from Cuba at the age of 15 years as an unaccompanied minor and eventually became a naturalized citizen of this great country. I have a sense of the high responsibility entrusted to me and the daunting challenge of fundamentally transforming the delivery of services by the U.S. immigration system. I appreciate probably better than most that we must restore public confidence in the integrity of America's immigration services. It is this fundamental mission that guides USCIS as it faces the challenges of a new era.
Just as the backlog was created over time, there are no quick fixes. Only through our commitment and our perseverance will we be able to claim success.
Thankfully, we have the opportunity, the leadership, and the talent to make an impact. By the end of 2006, we will eliminate the application backlog and achieve the 6-month cycle time that was promised by President Bush, while enhancing national security, and in so doing we will deliver on the President's vision of ''welcoming immigrants with open arms . . . not endless lines.''
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Let me note some accomplishments to date. During the short time I have been honored to lead the 15,000 men and women of USCIS, we have accomplished a great deal. Let me just cite a few examples.
We have created a new Federal organization. We've naturalized over 650,000 new citizens. We have welcomed over 1 million new immigrants. We've conducted over 35 million background security checks. We've initiated on-line case status and processing status updates. We've initiated on-line filing for eight application forms which represent over 50 percent of the potential total volume of benefit applications. We've created and began deployment of InfoPass, a Web-based information appointment system, which is now implemented in Florida, Los Angeles, and Dallas, dramatically reducing and eliminating lines outside of our offices. We've established the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security, and this week, of course, we've delivered a Backlog Elimination Plan to Congress.
I'd like to bring up a slide of a typical day at USCIS. Let's see if the technology is up to speed. Here we go. Thank you.
As Congresswoman Jackson Lee was mentioning, a typical day at USCIS can be viewed in this slide, and I'll just touch on a few. We do 140,000 national security background checks on a typical day. We receive over 80,000 phone calls at four national customer service centers. We get over 100,000 hits at our website on a daily basis. And we welcome 190 refugees and so forth and so on.
The purpose of this slide is to make sure that we understand that on a daily basis our operation is very intensely involved with a huge amount of volume. We—I'm sorry. We have—we have a tremendous amount of business, and that is what we're trying to deal with as we implement our changes.
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Okay. I'm sorry. The backlog of applications is a serious problem and, until recently, a growing problem.
Early in 2001. President Bush charged the INS, the old INS, with reducing the processing times for benefit applications to less than 6 months. He proposed funding of $500 million over 5 years to achieve and maintain this ambitious goal.
It is important to understand the magnitude of this challenge. Backlogs of immigration benefit applications began to grow during the 1990's. Overall, there was a 77 percent increase from fiscal year 1993 to fiscal year 2001. The primary factors contributing to the backlogs were a dramatic increase in applications received, delays in adjusting our fees, the time it takes to recruit, hire, and train adjudicators, and the lack of a comprehensive approach to monitoring, supporting, and maintaining timely processing.
Let me show you in a slide, the backlog picture. The Backlog Elimination Plan was drafted in response to the President's initiative. However, the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the resulting focus on national security, including the NSEERS program and enhanced background checks on processing of all immigration benefit applications, posed additional challenges to achieving a 6-month cycle time standard for all applications.
From this slide, you can see how the backlog grew significantly and steadily after 9/11. However, you can also see that we have recently crested the peak and are now making headway in the backlog. USCIS is now on a trajectory to meet our backlog elimination goals. I'd like to note that since December of 2003, we have reduced the backlog by over 360,000 cases, and that's demonstrated on that slide.
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Let me take a moment to clarify for you what is backlog. A case that is filed today is considered pending, not backlog. We have set target cycle times for our applications. For most cases, including naturalization and adjustment of status, the cycle time should be 6 months. For some others, such as the employment authorization card, the target cycle time should be 3 months. If a case is not adjudicated within the target cycle time, then it becomes part of the backlog.
USCIS calculates the current backlog to be approximately 3.7 million cases out of a total pending of about 6.1 million cases. Put another way, 60 percent of our pending cases are a backlog problem.
Our Backlog Elimination Plan focuses on three objectives: achieving a high level of performance by establishing clear, concrete milestones and actively monitoring and managing progress toward these milestones; two, transforming business practices by implementing significant information technology improvements and identifying processing improvement to transform the current way of doing business; and, three, ensuring integrity by instituting comprehensive quality assurance measures.
We fully realize that the increased funding requested in the budget alone will not be able—will not enable us to realize our goals. We must fundamentally change the way we conduct our business. We're aggressively working to modernize our systems and increase our capacity through the reengineering of processes, the development of implementation of new information technology systems, and the development of mechanisms to interact with customers in a more forward-reaching manner.
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Given current data on the backlog, productivity, and workload, USCIS must achieve a 19.6% increase in production to achieve cycle time goals and eliminate the backlog by the end of 2006.
In order to achieve these productivity increases, USCIS is reengineering our processes and better utilizing technology to achieve greater efficiencies. We're updating policies and procedures to streamline adjudications and increasing the percentage of cases completed at initial review by an adjudicator. We're managing production against milestones, beginning with collaboratively setting goals, reporting progress, and identifying additional improvement opportunities. And we're working cooperatively with the Office of the Ombudsman to test alternative processing approaches and new applications of proven off-the-shelf technology.
I'd like to show a slide of reversing the trend. USCIS has already begun to show progress during the first 6 months of the fiscal year. Production is up. Pending and backlog figures are down. In this slide you can see the point in time when our completions began to exceed our receipts. This is fundamentally how we make headway in the backlog.
We have begun to institute the first of several good-government initiatives as part of our aggressive business redesign efforts. By the end of the month, we plan to publish a regulation to allow us to issue Employment Authorization Documents, known as EADs, for periods greater than 1 year. Over time this will enable us to eliminate the unnecessary repetition of applicants for renewed cards.
We're also expediting the adjudications of simple applications. With green card renewals, we will utilize technology to search databases to provide critical information, such as status verifications and background checks, so that in this way the adjudication is a simple yes or no based on the information before the adjudicator.
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We're working to eliminate the need for unnecessary requests for evidence. For example, recently we issued guidance advising adjudicators that in most cases it's not necessary to request updates of financial information that was current at the time of filing. Other improvements requiring regulatory changes are being drafted. And many other improvements are coming.
Maintaining national security is paramount. Let me be perfectly clear about one thing. Productivity gains will not be at the expense of our national security responsibilities. USCIS clearly understands the responsibility to the Department of Homeland Security, the Congress, the President, and the American people.
From our point of view, compromising our national security is simply not an option.
In addition to enhanced security checks, USCIS has established the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security to work with the appropriate law enforcement agencies to respond to national security hits on aliens who pose a threat and for identifying systemic fraud in the application process.
This component will screen, identify, and refer cases involving suspected fraud and threats to public safety or national security to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—of course, known as ICE—for field investigation and enforcement action.
The next slide, please. I would like to think of our daunting task like climbing Mount Everest. It is a great challenge, but it can be done. It is also not a task for the naysayers. You need the right team and tools, a strong commitment, some patience, a lot of motivation, perseverance, and in my case, a healthy optimism. We have already reached our base camp and are well on our way. We have a clear vision of the top of the mountain and how we're going to get there.
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During our first year, USCIS stood up an organization of which I am very proud. We have established accountability in our leadership team and improved many of our operational processes. We have submitted a Backlog Elimination Plan and continue to strive to make further improvements. We will be measuring against milestones and providing quarterly updates to Congress on our progress toward those milestones.
The progress that we have made and the reputation we have built over the past 15 months will provide the momentum for continued success in the months and years ahead.
With the last slide, I'll conclude my remarks. I'm confident that we will reach our goal of 6 months for every case type at every office without compromising national security.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, this concludes my remarks, and thank you for the invitation to testify before this Committee, and I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Aguirre follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF EDUARDO AGUIRRE, JR.
Good afternoon Chairman Hostettler, Ranking Member Jackson Lee and Members of the Subcommittee. Today I will report to you the progress that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has made in its initial fourteen months and the ambitious goals that we will reach in the months and years ahead. The Backlog Elimination Plan submitted to Congress this week reaffirms USCIS commitment to eliminating the backlog. This commitment is not just one of words, but one of action. Since my appointment and confirmation as the first-ever Director of USCIS, I have worked closely with the leaders in USCIS to immediately review our processes, identify opportunities for streamlining and further improvement, and begin to implement meaningful change.
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To say that this has been a year of change for this agency would be an understatement of great proportions. In the past fourteen months, USCIS has brought together components of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to create a new, energized, cohesive agency with a single vision:
''Provide the right benefit to the right person in the right amount of time, and prevent the wrong person from accessing immigration benefits''
USCIS is committed to building and maintaining an organization that provides immigration information and benefits in a timely, accurate, consistent, courteous, and professional manner. It is this fundamental mission that guides USCIS as it faces the challenges of a new era.
The Backlog Elimination Plan focuses on three objectives:
Achieve a high-level of performance by establishing clear, concrete milestones and actively monitoring progress towards these milestones;
Transform business practices by implementing significant information technology improvements and identifying processing improvements to transform the current way of doing business; and,
Ensure integrity by instituting comprehensive quality assurance measures.
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USCIS will increase its focus on information technology to ensure that long-term Backlog Reduction is sustained, customer service is improved, new fee for service business models are enabled, and a technology environment is deployed to support new processes and workflow aligned with the DHS mission and Presidential mandate for eGov standards.
These objectives have started USCIS in the right direction and have begun to deliver improvements, but there is much more to be done. Just as the backlog was created over time, we must recognize that there is no quick fix to all our challenges—only through our commitment will we be able to claim success.
Thankfully, we have the opportunity, the leadership, and the talent to make an impact. By the end of 2006, we will eliminate the application backlog and achieve six-month cycle times, and in doing so will deliver on the President's vision of ''welcoming immigrants with open arms . . . not endless lines.''
ACCOMPLISHMENTS TO DATE
During the short time I have been honored to lead the men and women of USCIS, we have accomplished much. We have:
Created a new organization and self-standing structure with a leadership team;
Re-energized and redirected the legacy INS benefits workforce of 10,000 government and 5,000 contract employees:
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Created a customer-oriented culture incorporating Dignity, Respect and Ingenuity as core values;
Established a new Office of Citizenship;
Launched the USCIS Website;
Established separate goals within the DHS strategic plan;
Created a new Refugee Officer Corps;
Streamlined the certificate of citizenship process for adopted children;
Naturalized 670,000 new citizens;
Welcomed over one million new immigrants;
Initiated on-line case status and processing status updates;
Initiated on-line filings for 8 applications forms, representing over 50% of the total volume of benefit applications annually;
Created and began national implementation of a web-based information appointment system (InfoPass);
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Expanded the customer service line to overseas callers;
Revised the fee schedule;
Initiated four pilot projects aimed at improving customer service and reducing backlogs;
Established the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security to be responsible for working with the appropriate law enforcement entities in responding to national security hits on aliens who pose a threat and for identifying systemic fraud in the application process; and,
Revised the Backlog Elimination Plan that includes measurable milestones to gauge progress toward backlog elimination goals.
All this has been accomplished in the context of the work we do every day:
Process 140,000 national security background checks;
Receive 100,000 web hits;
Take 50,000 calls at our Customer Service Centers;
Adjudicate 30,000 applications for immigration benefits;
See 25,000 visitors at 92 field offices;
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Issue 20,000 green cards; and
Capture 8,000 sets of fingerprints and digital photos at 130 Application Support Centers; and,
Receive 450 Freedom of Information Act requests.
BACKLOG ELIMINATION PLAN
The backlog of applications is a serious problem and until very recently, growing.
Early in 2001, President Bush charged the INS with reducing the processing times for benefits applications to less than six months. The President proposed funding of $500 million to achieve and maintain this ambitious goal.
It is important to understand the magnitude of this challenge. Backlogs of immigration benefit applications began to grow during the 1990s. Overall, there was a 77% increase from FY 1993 to FY 2001. The primary factors contributing to the backlogs were a dramatic increase in the number of applications and petitions received, delays in adjusting our fees and filling positions to process this increasing number of applications, the lengthy amount of time it takes to recruit, hire and train adjudicators, and the lack of a comprehensive approach to monitoring, supporting and maintaining timely processing.
The original Backlog Elimination Plan drafted in response to the President's initiative was intended to serve as the foundation for a renewed backlog elimination effort. However, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and the resulting focus on national security, including the National Security Entry Exit Registration System (NSEERS) Program and enhanced background checks on processing of all immigration benefits applications, posed additional challenges to achieving a six-month cycle time standard for all applications.
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Nevertheless, the USCIS is on track to meet its goals to eliminate the backlog by the end of 2006. The Backlog Elimination Plan will:
Report on the current size of the application backlog;
Identify the next steps to eliminate the backlog and achieve a six-month or less cycle time target for all forms by the end of 2006;
Establish annual production goals; and,
Provide a plan to measure progress through quarterly reports and on-line information available on each district office and service center.
USCIS defines the backlog as the number of cases that exceed their cycle time. Naturalization and adjustment of status, for instance, have a 6-month cycle time while applications for nonimmigrant workers, change of status, and employment authorization have shorter 3-month cycle-time targets.
USCIS calculates the current backlog, based on cases exceeding these cycle times, to be approximately 3.4 million cases as of the end of 2003. The inclusion of Asylum Division cases raises the backlog to about 3.7 million cases out of a total pending of about 6.1 million cases.
THE WAY AHEAD
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We fully realize that the increased funding requested in the budget alone will not enable us to realize our goals. We must fundamentally change the way we conduct our business. We are aggressively working to modernize our systems and increase our capacity through the reengineering of processes, the development and implementation of new information technology systems, and the development of mechanisms to interact with customers in a more forward-reaching manner.
Given current data on the backlog, productivity, and workload, USCIS must achieve a 19.6% increase in non-Asylum production to achieve cycle time goals and eliminate the backlog by the end of 2006. In addition, the Asylum Division must realize a 3% increase in production in order to achieve the same result.
In order to achieve these productivity increases, USCIS will:
Reengineer processes and automate manual workflow processes to achieve greater efficiencies;
Update policies and procedures to streamline adjudications and increase the percentage of cases completed at initial review by an adjudicator;
Manage production against milestones—beginning with collaboratively setting goals, reporting progress, and identifying additional improvement opportunities; and,
Work with the Office of the Ombudsman on pilot projects to test alternative processing approaches and new applications of proven off-the-shelf technology.
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USCIS has already begun to show progress in this direction during the first six months of this fiscal year. Production is up, pending and backlog figures are down. We have begun to make progress by instituting the first of several Good Government Initiatives designed to reduce the number of times an application is handled, and through the efforts of every employee rededicating himself or herself to the task at hand.
USCIS has begun an aggressive process redesign effort in the following areas:
Card Issuance—By the end of the month we plan to publish an interim final rule to allow ourselves to issue Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) for periods greater than 1 year. Over time this will enable us to eliminate the unnecessary repetition of applications for renewed cards.
Expediting the adjudication of easy applications—With green card renewals we will utilize technology to search databases to provide critical information, i.e. status verifications and background checks, so that in this way the adjudication is a simple yes or no based on that information.
Requests For Evidence (RFEs)—Recognizing the costs, of both time and human capital in the processing of RFEs, we have been working to eliminate the need for unnecessary RFEs. Some of this improvement has been accomplished by memoranda, such as the recently issued memorandum advising adjudicators that in most cases it is not necessary to request updates of financial information that was current at the time of filing. Other improvement requires regulatory changes that are being drafted.
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In the months ahead, USCIS will:
Enhance data-sharing and inter-agency process improvements to eliminate steps in the processes that add little or no value;
Modify regulations to clarify requirements for adjudicators and for applicants;
Reduce pending Asylum cases that have been likely abandoned or overcome by other events;
Use systems capabilities to run batch queries against data systems rather than spending time manually checking systems; and,
Continue to manage production against targets.
But we have further to go. The weeks and months ahead are key to continuing this positive trend and making the successes we have realized become the new baseline for the bureau rather than temporary blips on a production chart.
USCIS will ensure that all customers are provided an opportunity to receive a decision within six months or less. However, we recognize that even after the backlog is eliminated, some cases may take longer than six months, such as those cases where security checks have indicated a possible significant terrorist risk or criminal activity.
MAINTAINING NATIONAL SECURITY
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But let me be perfectly clear about one thing. Productivity gains will not be at the expense of our National Security responsibilities. USCIS clearly understands its responsibilities to the Department of Homeland Security, the Congress, the President and the American people. Compromising on National Security is not an option.
In addition to enhanced security checks, USCIS understands that maintaining national security and deterring fraud are critical elements of its mission. To process these workloads, USCIS has established the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS) to be responsible for working with the appropriate law enforcement entities in responding to national security hits on aliens who pose a threat and for identifying systemic fraud in the application process.
This component, in cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will screen, identify, and refer cases involving suspected fraud and threats to public safety or national security to ICE for field investigation and enforcement action. Anti-fraud efforts will include developing standard operating procedures to aid field Adjudications staffs in identifying suspected fraud. These initiatives will better enable USCIS to identify applications that may involve fraud, deny benefits to aliens who commit fraud, and place those aliens in removal proceedings.
CONCLUSION
USCIS is committed to this goal and will work cooperatively with our stakeholders, including Congress, to see it to its successful completion.
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During our first year, USCIS stood up an organization of which we are very proud. We have established a leadership team, improved many of our operational processes, and continue to strive to make further improvements.
The progress that we have made and the reputation we hope we have built over the past fourteen months will provide the momentum for continued success in the months and years ahead.
This concludes my prepared remarks. I thank you for the invitation to testify before this subcommittee and I would be happy to answer any questions.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Thank you, Director Aguirre.
At this point, out of order, without objection, the gentlelady from California, Ms. Sánchez will have 5 minutes for an opening statement.
Ms. SÁNCHEZ. Thank you, Chairman Hostettler, and also Ranking Member Jackson Lee, for today's hearing. The issue that we're examining today, the immigration backlog and its detrimental impacts is an issue that my Democratic colleagues and I have said over and over again is critical—is a critical component to fixing our broken immigration system. We made backlog reduction one of the top priorities in the SOLVE Act, H.R. 4262, that was introduced in May, on May 4th, and I urge the Chairman to follow this hearing on reducing the immigration backlog with a markup of the SOLVE Act so we can make immigration backlog reduction the law.
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We need to reduce the backlog because the processing delays are keeping families apart for years and sometimes even decades. Thousands of immigrants follow the rules and submit their visa applications like they're supposed to, only to end up waiting for years to reunite with their spouses, children, or parents because of the backlog. One of the main reasons why immigrants come here illegally is to reunite with members of their family. And, simply put, the visa backlog is one of the main causes of illegal immigration in this country.
And what is the current Administration doing about the backlog problem? If you've read the papers lately, you'd think their solution was to perform random immigration sweeps. Last week, there were several newspaper reports that more than 200 immigrants were arrested in the Inland Empire in Southern California, close to my neck of the woods. According to reports, Federal agents were interrogating and arresting immigrants outside of supermarkets, restaurants, as they got off buses on their way to work, and even as they were stopping—they were even stopping cars at roadside checkpoints.
Any person of Hispanic appearance or descent was a target of the sweeps. The agents stopped a Pasadena City College student legally in the U.S. on a student visa and interrogated him on the street about his immigration papers. The agents then drove the student home and forced him to produce his student visa papers to prove he was legal.
In another incident, a Latino waitress named Lourdes Rangel, a U.S. citizen, witnessed men in white vans stopping cars and interrogating drivers. Some of the agents questioned her and demanded that she show them proof of her citizenship. These very extreme arrests do nothing to fix the current immigration system. The only thing that they serve to do is to create fear and panic in local communities.
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A school in Pasadena reported that 30 percent of the students skipped school after the reports were made public. Restaurants, stores, and doctors' offices were empty last week, and my office continues to receive phone calls about that. And many said—many doctors said that they were inundated with calls asking if it was safe to come by and get medical care or even to go and buy simple necessities at the supermarket.
It's not really in question that the sweeps were based on racial profiling and not on any evidence that the particular arrestees were in the country illegally. The U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection claims the sweeps were neither racial profiling nor an agency-wide policy. But I find it hard to believe that race didn't play a factor in the interrogations when 90 percent of the arrests were of Mexican nationals. Currently, MALDEF is investigating the sweeps to see if the sweeps violated the victims' due process rights or were unreasonable searches and seizures.
Constitutional violations and random race-based arrests are not the way to deal with illegal immigration in this country. The Administration's $500 million initiative to reduce the visa backlog to a 6-month processing time by 2006 is an excellent idea, and I urge the President and his Administration to make sure that this idea becomes, in fact, a reality. Likewise, I urge the President to give the same priority to backlog reduction that he does in the efforts to deport hard-working, law-abiding immigrants, and even citizens.
The last time Mr. Aguirre testified before this Subcommittee, we discussed how only $60 million in additional funds were proposed for the backlog reduction in the President's fiscal year 2005 budget proposal. This sum paled in comparison to the $281 million for enforcement programs in the President's budget proposal.
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We need to make visa backlog reduction a much higher priority. There are 6 million visa applications waiting to be processed. That equates to millions of separated families and the possibility for millions of immigrants to fall into illegal status.
Processing these applications in a timely way is just as important as enforcement efforts to fixing our immigration system and making our borders safe and secure. I hope that this time next year Mr. Aguirre is testifying before this Subcommittee and telling us how successful the reduction plan is, that the backlog has already been dropped by 50 percent and will be at zero in 2006.
I want to thank our witness for taking the time to come here and give us testimony before this Committee about what steps are being taken to produce a visa backlog program, and, Mr. Chairman, I'm also working on a letter to President Bush and Secretary Ridge expressing concern about the immigration sweeps in Los Angeles. The letter should be completed shortly, and I ask unanimous consent to submit that letter, as well as a letter from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus addressing the same issue, into the record for this Subcommittee hearing.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Without objection.
Ms. SÁNCHEZ. Thank you. I yield back my remaining time.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentlelady. The panel will now go to questions on a 5-minute basis.
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Director Aguirre, on your first day on the job as Director, what was the condition of the adjudication system you inherited? Would it be fair to say that it was dysfunctional?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure that I would use that word. I think it was contrary to efficiency because after 9/11, under the Immigration and—INS tenure, many of the adjudicators had to be redeployed to do tasks that were inherent toward national security, not toward the adjudication of cases. A case in point would be NSEERS program. A number—hundreds of our adjudicators were redeployed to handle the NSEERS situation.
Since I took over the operations, we worked our way to transfer the responsibility of the NSEERS program to ICE, and, therefore, we've been able to reclaim the adjudicators to do what they're supposed to do.
Additionally, I think it's worthy to note that post-9/11, there was a significant concern by our adjudicators to adjudicate, just somewhat of a paralysis of fear that a mistake might be made and that zero tolerance may be in effect. We have empowered our adjudicators to make sure that they follow the rules, but also use their extensive experience and managerial access to make sure that they continue to process the cases.
So dysfunctional, I don't think I would use that word, but inefficient, certainly I would. And I think our task has been to bring efficiency and effectiveness into the process without compromising the integrity of the system.
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Mr. HOSTETTLER. Very good. Thank you. You've explained a lot about the backlog, but can you tell me more about the history of the backlog. Did not the backlog—was not the backlog created in large part as a result of new and large numbers of immigrant applications taking subsidiary of the 245 program to allow mainly out-of-status aliens a chance to get a green card?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Of course, there is a cause and effect, as I think you're alluding to. There was a period of time a number of years ago where an amnesty program was in effect that allowed a number of people to come into a green card and then ultimately citizenship status, which in itself then created a new availability for demand for some of the products that we offer. And then that has simply mushroomed into a very large operation.
What I think is significant to note is that before Congress decided to separate the responsibilities of service and enforcement, the typical Commissioner was faced with competing priorities, with allocation of human and monetary resources to either enforcement or service. Currently, we're able to focus and laser-focus our attention toward very basic services. We're here to reduce the backlog, improve customer service, and do it in an environment of national security. All of that is without being concerned with, as Congresswoman Sánchez was mentioning, the issue of enforcement. I'm sure she's directing her comments to the enforcement side of Homeland Security or the rest of the Nation because, of course, we do not have any enforcement authority or responsibility, other than if we identify a potential terrorist or somebody who is trying to defraud the system, we refer them to the enforcement side of the Government for appropriate action.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. And going along with that, does the backlog encourage aliens to file frivolous petitions? In other words, do legal aliens who want to stay permanently in the U.S. figure that it will take so long for CIS to adjudicate their case that they would find in some cases bogus claims to stay in the United States?
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Mr. AGUIRRE. There is some of that, and we're trying to—through technology and otherwise, we're trying to identify frivolous applications so that they can be promptly adjudicated in the negative or, for that matter, low-risk applications to be adjudicated in the positive, as the case may be.
Indeed, I think you're very much aware of the fact that the Immigration and Nationality Act is perhaps the most complex set of laws that our Congress has bestowed upon our Nation. And, therefore, we understand that the complexity of that problem lends itself to a lot of litigation opportunities for unscrupulous as well as scrupulous lawyers.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Director Aguirre, you are anything if not diplomatic in your relations with Congress when you refer to the complexity of the INA and what we have bestowed upon the American people.
At this the Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, for 5 minutes.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much.
I know that sometimes we have something called ''funny math,'' and I appreciate—I'm going to ask probably a funny math question. For a long time, we've been talking about 6 million backlog, and I would be concerned that we be as accurate as we can be in the numbers. And so one of my first questions will be—and I want to just pursue this discussion for a little bit. One of my first discussions will be is that this very—I think very neat day in USCIS, as it reflects the numbers that we've been working with now for almost a year, and I know that some numbers that have been cited is about a 3.2 million——
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Mr. AGUIRRE. 3.7.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. 3.7 million backlog, but the numbers that we have been working with have been 6 million. And I think it is important that before we pursue a line of questioning, that this be established. Benefits is, of course, a question that impacts people accessing legalization. So it is part of the constitutional process of giving people the opportunity to seek citizenship. And for those who may be negative about immigrants or immigrant laws or too many immigrants, this is the wrong place to be, because what we're suggesting is that there is a process to deal with people who are seeking legalization. And when we hear the word ''benefits,'' I know someone is somewhere looking at this and suggesting that there goes my job, there goes my opportunity. That is not the case.
In certain instances, the individuals trying to access legalization are, in fact, creating jobs. Some of them are going against the tide of what we abhor, some of us, something called ''outsourcing,'' where jobs go overseas. Some of them are preventing those jobs from going overseas by being here and creating jobs or bringing the particular expertise here to the United States.
And so in the course of not being able to move these individuals quickly, we're, in fact, putting a knife in our economy to a certain extent; we're, in fact, dividing families, children; and certainly what we're doing is we're not in any way, I believe, meeting America's promise.
So my first question would be to the Director—and I thank you for your testimony—is about these numbers. The second question would be, if I may share this, is to hear more about the milestones that you're going to use to measure your progress in eliminating the benefits application backlog. I'm particularly interested in what you plan to do if these milestones are not achieved. And might you also include the question that my colleague raised, is I believe that this is going to take a sizable increase in funding. And the question is: Do we have not only the commitment that you have certainly offered with your expertise, but really the Administration prepared to bring forward a reasonable request that tracks this amount of change that you're expecting? And I guess my last point is you say that we're going to spend more time on what we call moderate to high risk. My concern is: Who's going to discern low and moderate, and are we really going to have a transparent and fair system when we begin to do that? And I thank you for listening to the litany questions, but I know that you're able and prepared.
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Mr. AGUIRRE. Congresswoman, as I get older, my memory gets shorter, so I hope I'm not going to miss anything. I am sure you will remind me if I do. Let me go to the numbers, if I will.
If somebody files an application today, that's not part of the backlog. It doesn't become part of the backlog until 6 months and a day later when we are not processing it in an efficient and effective fashion. The President has set 6 months as the appropriate cycle time. Actually, with time, we hope to improve upon that. But, therefore, I'm distinguishing the pending file from the backlog file, and we're saying that in the pending file we have 6.1 million—6.1 million applications pending, whereas 3.7 of them, or approximately 60 percent, are beyond 6 months.
I think that's a very fundamental understanding. We cannot call—because, otherwise, we would never meet the backlog goal. Every day we'd be behind any kind of a backlog establishment. So that's a fundamental difference, and, therefore, that's where we're working on both the backlog as well as the pending applications. Now——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Milestones that you're going to use to measure your progress.
Mr. AGUIRRE. We have multiple milestones, and what we're doing is we're managing application by application, we're managing office by office, service center by service center, almost adjudicator by adjudicator. We have established management systems today that were just simply not in place before. And we're using some of our technology systems to allow us for timely assessment on where we are.
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If we should miss any of our milestones—and, in fact, I predict that we will be missing milestones here and there—we're now in a position to redeploy our internal resources to address those shortcomings that may come up. In other words, if one particular city finds itself behind the eight ball in terms of milestones, it could be because it's a small city and people are on maternity leave or may have taken excused absence for a long period of time, bringing down the percent of the personnel. We are then looking to other offices where there is a certain amount of flexibility and redeploying human resources to be able to respond to that situation. So from a milestone standpoint, the most important thing for me is that it's a management tool that allows us to deal with the unexpected.
We will be reporting to Congress, as I mentioned in my comments, on a quarterly basis. Therefore, you'll be able to see whether or not, along with us, whether or not we're on target and what we're doing about it. And the money.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. The money and deciphering low risk from high risk.
Mr. AGUIRRE. Follow the money. Quite frankly, Congresswoman, I really do believe that our budget has been very carefully crafted, and that my challenge lies not in taking more money and figuring out what to do with it—it's more a challenge of making my staff working, as it was mentioned earlier by Congresswoman Lofgren, working smarter not harder. I am very, very comfortable that the budget that has been put forth is adequate to serve our needs. And if I felt otherwise, I would tell you.
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Mr. HOSTETTLER. The gentlelady's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. King, for 5 minutes.
Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and recognizing we have a vote coming up across the street, I'll try to move through here quickly.
First of all, I would pose the question to Mr. Aguirre: Does the United States of America have any record or any history of inadvertently or not legally deporting U.S. citizens to other nations by mistake?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Congressman, I'm sorry. I'm just not equipped to answer that question. I'm not in the law enforcement business, so I wouldn't really know. I'd be happy to look into that and see if we can respond to you.
Mr. KING. But if that happened, wouldn't it be reasonable that those people would come back before you for readmittance?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Well, if someone was deported inappropriately, then I suppose it would come back to us to verify the naturalization of the individual, and we would then respond accordingly.
Mr. KING. Does that happen?
Mr. AGUIRRE. I just don't know, sir.
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Mr. KING. Okay. And I never hear of that happening, and that is why I took the opportunity to ask that question. And what sparked the question was the testimony of Ms. Sánchez that there are people that don't show up for work or for medical care or for education because there's been activity on the part of the INS in the region, which concerns me if people don't show up, then it would indicate that either they were being unjustly adjudicated or maybe they were illegal. So I would just ask unanimous consent to submit a rebuttal to those opening remarks of Ms. Sánchez to the record and then make a point to Mr. Aguirre.
This is a complete document, and you've made your point very clear, and I appreciate that. I like it when I can understand it in black and white. And I hope we can come back and visit this maybe in a year and see how things are going, and then in 2 years and see that it's completed. But for 2006, does that mean the first day or the last day?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Congressman, the President's commitment and promise of the $500 million over 5 years ends on September 2006. And it is our focus and our goal to get to that date in eliminating the backlog on that day or before. And that's—that's what it is.
Mr. KING. The fiscal year. Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Aguirre, and your testimony. I appreciate it very much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. AGUIRRE. Thank you, sir.
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Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair will now recess the Subcommittee for a series of three votes. Director Aguirre, will you be able to hang around for about another half an hour for Members to come back?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Nothing could make me happier, sir. [Laughter.]
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Diplomacy. Diplomacy. Thank you.
We are recessed.
[Recess.]
Mr. HOSTETTLER. The Subcommittee will come to order.
Director Aguirre, I apologize for your wait. The half-hour was a little longer than a half-hour, and I apologize for that.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms. Lofgren, for 5 minutes for questions.
Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Director, for your testimony. And I was mentioning to Mr. Smith as we were walking back from the vote that I don't want you to take this personally because we have heard promises about backlogs many, many, many times, and it's engendered a certain skepticism on the parts of the Members of Congress, and it's not about you. It's just how many times can the football be taken away from Charlie Brown. So here are some questions I have.
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Mr. AGUIRRE. I used that same metaphor the other day.
Ms. LOFGREN. Aha. I'm interested in some very specific issues that I think could help smooth processing in important ways, and I've mentioned this in the past. I actually believe that ultimately immigrants and nonimmigrants will have or should have their cases, both in the case of nonimmigrant applications or applications for permanent residents, be filed by whatever biometric is used because then you won't end up with duplications of names and it would save time.
It's my understanding that the agency is now electronically gathering signatures in most cases, which is a big improvement, and I want to give you credit for that, and that we are also electronically taking photographs, which is an improvement, and I want to acknowledge that.
However, I think we are still not retaining the fingerprints, and we are still—or if I'm wrong, you tell me, but we have had cases in my office where the fingerprints age-out. I don't dispute the need to get a new criminal review through the FBI. What I've never understood is why we need a new set of fingerprints, because the reason why we get the fingerprints is they're immutable.
I was led to believe that it's because the FBI does not have—explain—is what I've been told, is my understanding correct or incorrect on this?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Congresswoman, that was then, this is now.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Okay.
Mr. AGUIRRE. We started storing and retaining the fingerprints a number of months ago. And, therefore, those who would have come before us before that date will have to continue to come back because fingerprints would have——
Ms. LOFGREN. I see. So we're going to see the tail end, but that's going to go away.
Mr. AGUIRRE. Absolutely.
Ms. LOFGREN. I see.
Mr. AGUIRRE. The issue was a storage capacity from a biometric standpoint. We have resolved that issue, and everything that we take in now is stored electronically in perpetuity.
Ms. LOFGREN. Very good. I have a question on your improvement initiatives. You're talking about precertification, and that's an interesting concept, and I think a promising one, on page 8. I'm interested if any progress has been made on precertification beyond the business sector. And I'm particularly interested in the science and academic sector. I think I mentioned this the last time you were here, and I know we did to Secretary Ridge and Secretary Powell. But we have very high-powered scientists, both doctoral students as well as professors, who travel frequently to scientific conferences, and if they can't go, they'll go to Oxford instead of Stanford. And we want those people, we want those hotshots here. Because whenever—if they're from a part of the world that we're suspicious about, they need to be cleared. None of them object to that, but the problem is that they have to be cleared every time they come in and out, and so it takes a long time. And I see a need of collaboration between the State Department, your agency, and Homeland Security, to make sure that, you know, once you've investigated somebody and you know it's okay, that we can somehow give preclearance and smooth that out for these scholars.
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Do you think that could be examined?
Mr. AGUIRRE. It is being examined, Congresswoman, and let me just draw the distinction between the apple and the orange, if I could.
The precertification that you were referring to is a precertification of employers so that IBM doesn't have to demonstrate every time——
Ms. LOFGREN. Right. No, I understood that, but I grabbed the name to make my point.
Mr. AGUIRRE. I appreciate that. Perhaps you're making reference to people that are coming here as visitors and——
Ms. LOFGREN. Right, where they're students, where they're O's.
Mr. AGUIRRE. Okay. Well, the O's and the P's are quite different from those who are coming here for—on a nonimmigrant basis. The bottom line is that we recognize that this is a problem and that people are choosing not to come to our country because of the difficulty of coming here.
Ms. LOFGREN. Right.
Mr. AGUIRRE. And I'm participating with Secretary Ridge——
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Ms. LOFGREN. Very good.
Mr. AGUIRRE.—who's inviting us to look for ways to make it better.
Ms. LOFGREN. If I could, just one final question. I know my time is up, but in looking at the backlogs, the elimination milestones, I noticed—sometimes I think if we just focused on a few things that cause problems when they don't work, it would give us time. And one of those, to wait 11 months for a reentry permit or 3 months for advanced parole is inevitably going to cause problems because you can't plan the funeral, I mean, or the death, and so then somebody gets stuck, and then their family calls the Congress Member and then we call you and you have to respond. If there were just a way to ease that, this whole mass of work would disappear. And I'm wondering if you've done that kind of functional analysis. You want to get all the backlog done, but the lack of some of these things just inevitably creates a whole mess of problems so that you might really get a bang for your buck on specific elements.
Have you done that kind of analysis?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Yes, ma'am, we have. I cannot respond to the particular one that you're referring to, but we have done extensive reengineering analysis to determine which are the processes that will give us the best bang for the buck, quickest bang for the buck, and compare them to something else and something else. I think you're absolutely right. We're not going to be able to do everything at once. We're going to have to take priorities, and we're doing just that, not to the exclusion of everything else but to the level of attention.
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You know, I like to think we're smart, and we're trying to solve this problem one big chunk at a time, if possible, as opposed to just all little ones at a time. We have very, very good people working on this, and I think we have found the numbers to begin to work in our favor.
Ms. LOFGREN. I see my time has expired, and I don't want to abuse the Chairman's indulgence. I did have one question on the chief information officer. Have you filled that?
Mr. AGUIRRE. Ma'am, we have. We have always had a chief information officer. The previous one was on—I'm not sure of the technical terms—temporary or interim basis. We have Tarrazzia Martin who has come to us from the Chief Information Officer in the Department of Homeland Security, and she is now working full-time to address the issue of information.
Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentlelady.
The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member, Ms. Jackson Lee, for a closing statement.
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Ms. JACKSON LEE. I thank the Chairman very much. I want to thank Congresswoman Lofgren for some of the very pointed questions that she asked, and as well, Congressman Berman's office, his apologies, because he was scheduled to be at another meeting, and Congresswoman Sánchez as well offered a very important statement that I hope that we'll be working on.
I wanted to congratulate you for the Ombudsman that you have. I hope and look forward to scheduling him because I think in the course of this new major effort, getting him to be seen and heard in places outside the Beltway may be very important inasmuch as he reflects on how your interagency—intra-agency is able to work more effectively together. And my point is—and if we can dialogue after this hearing in the next week and days as we look at this. I'm a little concerned about the money question because there is an increase of funds available for backlog reduction from the $100 million level, it was, to about $160 million. And it's about a 60 percent increase. But, frankly, we have a daunting job. I think it's important that if you're conveying messages, that you take back to the Administration and you will tell them, you know, get the convener or conveyor of the message, don't convey, or to destroy you, the messenger. But I think it's important when you come here that we be very honest with you. I don't think this is going to be enough money, particularly when you've been gracious enough to say that you are shipping people around and you may want to use Peter and Paul in different locations. I can, frankly, tell you that the Texas center is, you know, at a high peak and also probably at a very shrill point right now with overworked staff. And so let me just say, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to be looking at drafting a letter about funds. I think—I'm not sure if Congresswoman Sánchez, maybe joining her if that was her point and I may have missed it. But, in any event, I believe that we're going to have shortfalls, and I'm also going to be looking at this question of shifting, not in any way believing that there's not good intention. I just know that there's just so much that you can get out of in this instance a turnip, and I don't consider any of the employees such, but the metaphor just came to me.
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So I'm very concerned about how much you can get out of those hard-working employees, and for those who are listening that represent employees, hard-working employees, I just want them to be able to have all the resources that they need.
And the last point, Mr. Chairman, is most of us come from arts cities, and if you've ever heard a shrill voice, it's the Houston Grand Opera or the New York Symphony, when they can't get their talent here. And so we've been having a backlog on those J visas, and I would hope that when we talk about benefits that we sort of look at those in a keen manner, and I'm saying J. I meant to say P. But they've all got alphabet—I'm like you. I'll leave it on those visas that categorize professional, doctors, lawyers, entertainers, our wonderful violinists and operatic artists. This is a crisis, and we just got through dealing with the physician at the Texas Medical Center, one of many. So I would appreciate it, Mr. Chairman, if these points can be put on the Director's plate for a response and discussion.
I yield back. Thank you.
Mr. HOSTETTLER. I thank the gentlelady.
Before I bring the hearing to a close, I'd like to mention that this hearing is actually the first of two hearings. Next week at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, we will hear from the Department of Homeland Security Ombudsman to give his report on the backlog as required by the Homeland Security Act.
Director Aguirre, the Committee, the Subcommittee very much thanks you for being here today, for your insight, for your service, and that of the folks at CIS, and wants you to realize that we are here to help. And, finally, we apologize for the air-conditioning situation and keeping you too long today.
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The Subcommittee's work being done, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:04 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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