Speech #1100060029

He spent 16 years trying to become a United States citizen the right way. the legal way. My office has worked with him for a number of years in fact. helping him through this bureaucratic process and cutting through this outdated redtape. But due to the inefficiency of the current system. which processes over 7 million immigration applications per year using paper printouts. Metes case has been a 2 /-year debacle marked by mistakes. errors and blunders. The amendment I am offering today would prevent this sort of horror from continuing to happen in the future. A few years ago. USCIS embarked on a major technological overhaul for how it handles the millions of immigration applications it receives every year. The problem. though. is that they are not really putting this into place fast enough. That is why I am proposing that we take $30 million and apply it to carrying out the strategic information transformation through USCIS. Their plan includes online accounts that Federal agencies and applicants themselves can use to track their immigration status as it moves through the initial application process. to background checks. to adjudication and to final approval. It is a very commonsense way for us to track immigration applications. Beyond that. what we have to understand is USCIS estimates that it handles 7 million immigration applications using paper today. We should use Information Age technology to make sure that we have a fair process for those seeking to come to our country. and thereby reducing illegal immigration in the process. But the bulk of those 7 million applications. applications for citizenship and nonimmigration residency. require up to 11 different forms apiece. That means the USCIS has to handle tens of millions of forms annually just to keep track of the people currently in the system. That is why there are just reported 15.000 pending cases from the 1986 amnesty plan passed by Congress and enacted into law. That is right. 21 years later there are still more than 15.000 unresolved cases. If we want people to Immigrate to the United States legally and come to our country without sneaking across our border or breaking our laws or coming under the cover of darkness. then we must remove the barriers of illegal immigration. The $30 million I am proposing to devote to the USCI5 strategic transformation will significantly aid that process. Mr.