Los Angeles Times (California)
By Joseph Tanfani
February 10, 2015
President
Obama will soon roll out one of the most ambitious and controversial
programs of his presidency, an effort to grant a reprieve from
deportation to millions of
adult immigrants living in the country illegally.
With
time short and stakes high, the Obama administration knows it cannot
afford another debacle like 2013's botched introduction of the
Affordable Care Act.
The
challenges posed by the new immigration program will be enormous. The
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services projects 1.3 million people
will apply in the first
six months, starting in May, although no one knows for sure. Anything
close to that will be a giant new workload for the agency, which
processes about 6.3 million other applications annually.
The
cost of implementing the president's executive actions will be $324
million to $484 million over the next three years, according to a draft
of a letter from Homeland
Security Secretary Jeh Johnson obtained by The Times.
The
money to pay for the program will come from application fees, the
agency says. Because of that, the administration says it does not need
Congress' authority to spend
money on the program. The fee for DAPA — Deferred Action for Parents of Americans — will be $465. But the department will have to spend
millions before the fees start coming in.
In addition to the growing bureaucracy, a host of other challenges, including defining who is eligible, await the agency.
One
key difference from the healthcare rollout: no complicated website. The
immigration services agency still does most of its business on paper
and through the mail,
and hopefuls will mail in their applications.
The
expected flood of paper will bring its own challenges, however. The
applications will be handled at an office complex in suburban
Washington, with a new staff of 1,000
government workers, supplemented by as many as 1,000 private
contractors.
"It's
going to be a monumental effort," said Frank Sharry, executive director
of America's Voice, an advocacy group that usually backs the
administration. "It's arguably
the biggest [immigration] program they've ever had to implement, and
with a population that has done everything possible to avoid contact
with authorities."
In
November, Obama announced the executive action that would temporarily
defer deportation for up to 5 million of the 11.2 million people living
in the U.S. illegally.
By
far the largest chunk will come in the program known as DAPA. An
estimated 4 million people are thought to fit the criteria: continuous
residence in the U.S. since
Jan. 1, 2010, no serious crimes on record and a child who is a U.S.
citizen or other legal resident.
Republicans
are fuming at what they consider Obama's unconstitutional overreach and
have been looking for ways to stop the program. The House voted to
block any spending
on the new programs in the $39.7-billion budget for the Homeland
Security Department, which houses the immigration services agency. That
measure so far has failed to pass the Senate.
Also,
administration officials are watching a federal courthouse in Texas,
where a judge is weighing a challenge to Obama's plan from 26 states,
mostly led by Republican
governors.
"Processing
these illegal actions will obviously be very expensive," said Sen. Jeff
Sessions (R-Ala.), a vociferous critic of the executive action and
chair of the Senate
Immigration and the National Interest subcommittee. "To carry out his
plan he will need to move money from lawful enforcement programs of DHS
to unlawful policies that undermine enforcement."
The
administration isn't waiting to see how the Republican efforts play
out. It signed a $7.8-million lease for 246,000 square feet on 12 floors
in a complex outside Washington
and is planning a cost of about $40 million a year for new employees'
salaries and benefits.
The
program will be modeled on the administration's 2012 deferred
deportation program for young people, the so-called Dreamers. In that
program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the agency has handled more than 860,000 applications, with
some backlogs and delays but no major problems.
The
new rules expanded DACA, making about 300,000 more people eligible;
immigration offices will begin accepting those applications Feb. 18.
The
DAPA application process will be low-tech. Like a lot of federal
agencies, Citizenship and Immigration Services has struggled with
information technology. It has spent
about $1 billion on an electronic immigration system, ELIS, that is
still so clunky and limited that immigration officers can work twice as
fast on paper, according to an inspector general's report from July.
The
agency will rely on contractors to move the paperwork mountain. It
starts with the banking firm of J.P. Morgan Chase, which will be paid to
open envelopes, scan applications
and deposit checks at centers in Dallas and Phoenix.
A
spokesman for the Treasury Department, which handles those contracts,
said Saturday that the cost of those services was about $96 million last
year.
The
immigration services agency will hire another firm to do records work
for DAPA, which may cost as much as $30 million to $40 million for the
first year, according
to contractor estimates. In a bid document, the agency projects that
half of the eligible population for DAPA — about 1.9 million people —
will apply in the first 18 months.
The agency anticipates more than 800,000 applications in the first 90 days.
Getting
enough staff in place by May will be difficult, a former Homeland
Security official told a Senate committee last week. The immigration
services agency will probably
have to divert workers from other jobs — possibly leading to delays in
green card applications or other programs, said Luke Bellocchi, the
agency's former deputy ombudsman.
The agency says it will be ready.
"USCIS
is on pace to have several hundred employees on board and trained by
mid-May, which will ensure every case processed by USCIS receives a
thorough, case-by-case
review," said agency spokesman Chris Bentley, acknowledging that it may
have to pull workers from other tasks if there's an early surge.
"They
are going to be under pressure," said one former Homeland Security
official who asked for anonymity to discuss the program candidly. "The
community is going to want
to see the effects of this. But if they get a million applications in
the first three months, they are not going to have the staff to
adjudicate this."
The
agency is also trying to solve other challenges with the program —
starting with settling questions about who's eligible. A big one: How
will the agency define a parent?
Will step-parents be eligible? And what happens if those parents get
divorced? What about common-law spouses?
Another
thorny question has come up about the kinds of documents applicants
will need to produce. Many Dreamers relied on school records, even
attaching year-by-year class
portraits and report cards to their applications.
For
adults, leases, paychecks, utility bills and bank records will be
acceptable, but for people who've been living here illegally and trying
to stay under the radar,
proof might be thin.
"Documentation
is going to be much harder for this population," said Michelle Sardone,
legalization program director for the Catholic Legal Immigration
Network. "You don't
want people to take advantage of the situation, but you don't want to
make it so difficult that people can't get in."
Advocates
are planning a publicity campaign to coax people to step forward and
apply. The political furor in Washington probably won't scare people
away, they say, but
big delays and snafus might.
"If
it takes six months for anybody to get approved, that's going to affect
participation," said Charles Kamasaki, senior cabinet advisor to the
National Council of La
Raza. "If they are getting approvals in two to three months, then the
skeptics are more likely to come forward."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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