Speech #1140019468

Maybe number one now is "comptroller." but it didnt used to be. To the Comptroller General Dodaro. here is the letter that 22 of us sent yesterday: "As you know. on November 20. 2014. the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Jeh Johnson. issued a series of memoranda affecting federal immigration law. Included in the new DHS policy directives was an order to extend and expand the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. as well as an order to establish a new program that provides work authorization permits to an estimated five million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States. This new program was termed. Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. or DAPA. "U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is the federal agency that adjudicates applications for immigration benefits. This agencys website claims a workforce of 19.000 people operating throughout 223 offices worldwide with an annual operating budget of $4 billion. This agency is very unique from many other agencies. According to its own FY16 USCIS Budget Request. 96.8% of the agencys annual operating budget comes from fees collected from applicants for most types of immigration benefits. from petitions to sponsor relatives or employees. to replacement green cards. to naturalization applications. These feebased revenues appear to be considered permanently appropriated mandatory funds compared to annual discretionary appropriations which apply to federal agencies. As a result. this permanently appropriated mandatory spending allotment for USCIS falls outside the annual appropriations process. "While Congress determines the categories of aliens that are to be admitted into the United States. it does not always set the fees USCIS charges or constructively control how USCIS allocates its resources. This feegenerated portion of its annual budget. translating to $3.874 billion in FY16. appears to be completely fungible. That is. this money. raised for one purpose can perhaps be used for other purposes. This arrangement creates the potential for USCIS to. in effect. create slush funds and skim off congressionally authorized fees imposed on legal immigrants and their sponsors in order to fund programs that may not be specifically authorized by Congress. Mr. Joseph Moore. the Chief Financial Officer of USCIS. testified in a Senate hearing on March 3. 2015. that the agency determines the fees it charges based on a practice known as activitybased costing. Thus. transaction fees are proportional to the amount of time and resources to fulfill that transaction. However. records indicate that USCIS has a carryover balance from excess revenues at the end of FY14 of approximately $1.27 billion. Mr. Moore claimed that he seeks to maintain a rolling reserve balance of about $600 million to cover unexpected costs and surge activity. He further stated that funds from this account helped USCIS handle early spending in response to the executive actions. Eventually. new fees paid by illegal immigrant applicants are intended to replenish that account. plus cover all the new costs. What is not clear is why or how this agency has built up reserves of more than twice the amount it says it aims to keep for contingency requirements. This draws scrutiny as to how long this practice has occurred. for what reasons. what can or cannot be done with that money and. ultimately. how Congress can effectively conduct oversight. "Experts refer to this arrangement where an agency can skim off. or tax. certain types of applications in order to fund others as crosssubsidization. Currently. fees from legal immigrants and their sponsors subsidize refugee and asylum applications. military naturalizations. the antifraud division. and other activitieswith other activities being very broadly defined." So we go on and ask for the Comptroller General to audit the Department of Homeland Security because we havent gotten truthful answers. and we havent gotten complete answers. It appears we have a shadow government in existence that can go across the river and lease or purchase. spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. millions of dollarswe dont knowwithout any accountability to anybody. It moves toward being like a Kafka novel of just a completely unaccountable mammoth government that no individual can ever take on. That was never the intention of the Founders. nor those who have given their lives throughout the history of this. the greatest country in the history of the world. We are calling for an audit. We are asking the GAO to audit USCIS and find out critically needed answers. Homeland security agencies continue to be hindered by leadership that breaks the law and ignores the Constitution while using highly suspect spending practices. It has got to stop. and we have to know exactly what they are doing so that we can get them back with acting within the constitutional requisites. The Department of Homeland Security has been so obsessed. as directed by the President. with having open borders and bringing in illegal immigrants. As one border patrolman told me: We. in homeland security. are called logistics by the drug cartels. the gangs. all those people that bring in illegal aliens into the United States. Like the commercial that is widely seen on television. the logistics they are referring to are the fact that they can bring people into the United States illegally. the drug cartels and the gangs. for a huge. whopping fee. Once they get them in to the United States. they can count on Homeland Security to spend this money that many trying to do things the right way. the legal way. are paying to have their immigration. their visa application. expedited. We dont know where those expedited fees are going. but their visas. their applications are not really being expedited. so it would appear probably the Homeland Security Department is taking fees that are being paid for one thing by people wanting to do things the right way. the legal way. the constitutional way. and Homeland Security is subverting the law and the Constitution and spending it on people who keep coming in. pouring in naturally. illegally. because they are taken care of. Homeland Security will ship them around the country. All you have to do is come in. we will give you a hearing date some years in the future. ship you off. and dont worry about showing up for your hearings.