New York Times
By Julia Preston
May 20, 2013
Department of Homeland Security officials, responding to sharp criticism on Monday from a union representing 12,000 of its employees, said they had added many safeguards in recent years to protect against fraud and security violations by foreigners seeking to live in the United States.
The officials reacted swiftly to a statement by Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, in which he called on lawmakers to reject an immigration bill before the Senate, saying security procedures were weak for checking the backgrounds of millions of immigrants who would apply for immigration documents under the legislation.
Mr. Palinkas said he was adding his signature to a letter to Congress from a separate union that represents 7,700 federal deportation agents, which charged that the Senate bill would be a “significant barrier to the creation of a safe and lawful system of immigration.”
If the legislation passes, the immigration officers in Mr. Palinkas’s union will be central to carrying it out. They would review applications for provisional legal status from an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, as well as for millions of green cards and other immigration documents.
Administration officials rallied on Monday to dispute any contention that they had been lax on immigration security, and also to fend off any new opposition arising to the Senate bill, which President Obama strongly supports.
In his statement, Mr. Palinkas said immigration officers had been rushed into approving applications, with officials discouraging them from “proper investigation into red flags.”
The citizenship agency “has been turned into an approval machine,” Mr. Palinkas said.
He said a program started last year by Mr. Obama to give deportation reprieves to young undocumented immigrants had an approval rate of 99.5 percent. “Practices were put in place to stop proper screening and enforcement,” he said.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Palinkas said many agency employees felt they had been slighted by top officials, who paid more attention to the demands of immigrant advocate organizations.
“There is a sense of entitlement among the interest groups,” Mr. Palinkas said. “They expect to get what they seek.”
Homeland Security officials said that accusations of a “rush to yes” by the employees of the citizenship agency long predated the Obama administration. The agency created an antifraud unit in 2010 to increase the number and scope of reviews of immigrants applying for documents, the officials said, with the number of antifraud officers increasing by 20 percent since then. The agency greatly expanded requirements for screenings based on fingerprints and other biometric information, the officials said.
Rather than press for more approvals, the agency has scrutinized employees’ decisions to make sure they were consistent with the law, officials said, and set priorities allowing officers to focus on detecting immigrants who might be security threats.
Approval rates were high in the youth program, officials argued, because many young undocumented immigrants who were not likely to qualify either did not come forward to apply or withdrew when their applications were questioned by the agency.
“Reverting back to a system that treats violent criminals the same as children brought to this country through no fault of their own would only undermine the integrity of the immigration system and force law enforcement agencies to divert limited resources from focusing on those who pose real threats to their communities,” said Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
The bill by a bipartisan group of eight senators is moving through the Senate Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers on Monday continued voting on some 300 amendments. So far, opponents have gained little traction, although the committee has adopted several amendments, mainly by Republicans, to strengthen security provisions.
The letters from the immigration officers’ unions was quickly circulated by Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Republican who staunchly opposes the bill.
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