USCIS Officials Reveal Feds Processed 7 Million Immigration-Related Applications in One Year

On Tuesday, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials revealed that the agency processed nearly seven million immigration-related applications in just one year alone (fiscal year 2014). Because the agency does not have the resources to conduct in-person interviews with every applicant, officials noted that applicants for President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood (DACA) program did not have to go though face-to-face interviews before being granted temporary amnesty.

Potential applicants for President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty  program for the illegal immigrant parents of U.S. citizens will also not be given in-person interviews if the federal government is allowed to proceed with its implementation after the court case against it is resolved.

At a Senate Immigration and the National Interest Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the day the House passed a “clean” Homeland Security funding bill that did not defund Obama’s executive amnesty, Donald Neufeld, the Associate Director of Service Center Operations for USCIS, told the Senators that “USCIS administers the world’s largest immigration system that includes more than 100 immigrant and nonimmigrant classifications and more than 200 different forms and applications.”

He said that in fiscal year 2014 alone,”USCIS adjudicated nearly 7 million petitions and requests,” including applications for President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, naturalization and adjustment of status, visas, asylum and refugee requests, and humanitarian protections.

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Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who chairs the subcommittee, pointed out that lawful immigrants who apply for visas in various countries around the world have to be personally interviewed, and that illegal immigrants who are seeking temporary amnesty are processed with “less standards” and less scrutiny than those trying to come to the United States legally. {snip}

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Sessions told the officials that they have been “asked to do more than is physically possible” in trying to vet all of the executive amnesty applicants for ties to gangs or other past criminal activity.

“You just don’t have the ability to do this,” Sessions said, emphasizing that Obama should never have demanded amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants when there is not even enough staff and resources to process legal immigrants.

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