Page 18 - FCW, May 2017

IT Modernization
visas was two to three months, and the agency was processing about 195,000 a year, at a cost to applicants of about $2,130 each.
The snail’s pace was due in part to volume and to the fact that the lengthy applications, which run to 60 pages on average, were processed entirely on paper. Applicants printed them and submitted them in duplicate, with the origi- nal going to USCIS and a copy going to the State Department. Each appli- cation had to be checked against criminal and Cus- toms and Border Protec- tion records.
IMMIGRATION SNAFUS BY THE NUMBERS
$2.3 BILLION
Amount spent on a (failed) eight-year effort to digitize the immigration system
$100 MILLION
Amount USCIS will lose by suspending premium processing of H-1B visas
$1,600 – $5,000
Cost for regular processing of H-1B visas
2,500
Number of green cards erroneously marked as valid for 10 years instead of two years in 2013
5,000
Number of green cards issued with wrong names or birth dates in 2014
tion into a computer system that has been in use since at least 2003.
Furthermore, the Labor Department has digitally pro- cessed a form included in H-1B applications for almost 15 years, yet the same form has to be printed and mailed to USCIS. To get an email message from USCIS con- firming receipt of an applica- tion, applicants must submit a paper “Request for E-Noti- fication” form.
“To call it a transformation is insulting to intelligence,” said Houman Afshar, an immi- gration attorney who repre- sents corporate clients.
With much of its premium- processing windfall going into the Transformation program, USCIS has chosen since 2008 to use the proceeds from its regular visa-processing pro-
The premium service
was pitched as a boon to
businesses — particularly
technology companies —
that were more than willing to pay fees of $1,000 or more to cut the turnaround time from months to weeks. Today, reg- ular processing costs applicants from $1,600 to $5,000 per visa, and premium processing costs another $1,225.
the Electronic Immigration System — or ELIS, an acronym that plays off the country’s longtime immigration gateway Ellis Island.
ELIS was budgeted to cost no more than $2.1 billion and scheduled to be complete in June 2014. Agency offi- cials said it would handle all types of immigration petitions, including work visas, green cards, asylum requests and applications for citizenship. Applicants would be able to submit forms and sup- porting documentation digitally, and immigration officers would be able to process their petitions online. Petitions would be adjudicated more efficiently, and officials would be able to identify security risks, fraud and criminal activ- ity more effectively.
But ELIS mostly doesn’t work.
Designed to process all 90 kinds of immigration petitions digitally, today it can manage just two. Visa applica- tions are still submitted on paper, after which USCIS contractors place them in old-fashioned files and manually tran- scribe applicants’ biographical informa-
gram to cover the extra personnel and other costs related to the expedited service.
Not surprisingly, the agency hasn’t been able to keep up, resulting in what William Stock, president of the Ameri- can Immigration Lawyers Association, described as the death spiral for pre- mium processing.
He said the current logjam could have easily been avoided. “I would clas- sify it as malfeasance if they took that money and then did not hire sufficient numbers of officers,” he said.
USCIS officials said that since last year, they had been using premium- processing revenue to pay the salaries of immigration officers tasked with adjudicating the growing pile of expedit- ed H-1B petitions. The agency also said it was considering hiring more immi- gration officers and that the suspension would help the agency reduce process- ing times for all applicants whether or not they paid for premium service.
Chad Graham, a lawyer who repre- sents companies seeking H-1B visas on
The expedited option has become more popular as the time frame for reg- ular processing has grown longer. The latter jumped from 41 days in fiscal 2014 to eight months this year, USCIS data shows. Last year, 59 percent of H-1B applicants paid for premium process- ing, up from 36 percent two years ago. Premium processing revenue more than tripled in the past decade, reaching $488 million in 2016.
AN AVOIDABLE LOGJAM
The revenue from the premium pro- gram was supposed to cover the costs of providing that service while supply- ing funds for the much-needed effort to modernize USCIS’ infrastructure.
In 2005, the agency launched an initiative known as Transformation whose main focus has been building
18 May 2017 FCW.COM