DHS Approves Thousands Before Background Checks Are Complete February 14, 2008
Posted by Reginald Johnson in Government, Immigration.add a comment
Some people consider the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to approve thousands of persons in the green card process before the FBI completes their background checks as poor thinking. This a MAJOR policy shift with intentions of reducing an expanding immigration backlog. The Department of Homeland Security is preparing to grant permanent residency to tens of thousands of applicants before the FBI completes a required background check.
Not just everyone who has applied will be permitted to move forward. The people who are eligible are those whose fingerprints have cleared the FBI database of criminal convictions and arrests, but whose names have not yet cleared the FBI’s criminal or intelligence files after six months of waiting.
The immigrants who are granted permanent status, more commonly known as getting their green cards, will be expected eventually to clear the FBI’s name check. If they don’t, their legal status will be revoked and they’ll be deported.
The department’s decision to go this route, to many, clearly demonstrates how federal agencies are struggling to keep up with surging immigration applications. INS reported that over 1 million people more have applied for green cards in a little more than a year. The problem is; the department has not hired enough people to meet the demand. Since 9-11, background checks have become more stringent.
About 150,000 green card and naturalization applicants have been delayed by the name check, with 30,000 waiting more than three years.
DHS officials are determining exactly how many are affected, but confirmed that tens of thousands of people could be eligible for the expedited procedure. The new policy was outlined in an internal memo. Lawyers who represent immigrants applauded the change and predicted green cards would be issued faster. However, advocates of stricter immigration enforcement accused DHS of creating security loopholes and not solving the problem.
DHS officials said the new process does not pose new security risks because green card applicants have been allowed to remain in the country while they wait to be screened.
“This is something that we’re doing to get benefits to people who deserve them as quickly as possible,” said Chris Bentley of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS agency that processes green cards and citizenship.
Immigrants seeking citizenship will continue to be required to clear name checks before being naturalized. Officials said the requirements remain in effect for naturalization because U.S. citizenship is more difficult to revoke than a green card.
At the same time, the bureau tightened its background check requirements. The FBI not only runs applicants’ names against lists of suspects in criminal and intelligence files but also looks for names of applicants that have surfaced during the course of an investigation or any associates of suspects.
“It’s a very complicated process,” said Bill Carter, a FBI spokesman. “It involves dozens of agencies and databases and often foreign governments.”
Adding to the backlog, a surge of applications flooded Citizenship and Immigration Services last year, prompted partly by fee increases.
Although the FBI clears about 70 percent of the name checks within 72 hours, the bureau struggles to keep up with more than 74,000 requests per week, roughly half arising from immigration applications. Slowing the process even more, many applicants who don’t immediately clear are flagged for extra scrutiny because their names are similar to those of suspects.
Critics have charged the naturalization delays could unfairly shut potential voters out of the upcoming presidential election. Last month, Emilio Gonzalez, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, vowed to hire 3,000 new and retired employees to cut the backlog.
Immigrant advocates question why applicants waiting for naturalization couldn’t be approved before the FBI clears their names, too. Many people who apply for naturalization are green card holders who have lived in the United States for at least three years and have undergone similar background checks before.
And, assuming 10,000,000 applicants for amnesty and the present rate of 37,000 per week (only half of their present rate of 74,000 per week are immigration related), that means it would take over five years to process all of those.
And, that doesn’t take into account those currently in line. If the processing capability was allocated evenly between amnesty applicants and those who are already in line, it would be over ten years before all amnesty applicants had been processed, and that would obviously have a serious impact on those currently in line. And, under the various versions of reform, the DHS had only 24 hours (perhaps 48 hours in one version) to disapprove someone, or they’d be given their “Z-visa”. Note that that’s less than the 72 hours mentioned above.
