DHS Assistant Inspector General: Government Is Unprepared for Immigration Bill

Frank Deffer, assistant inspector general for the department of Homeland Security, told Congress yesterday that the federal government is not prepared to handle the increase in legalization applications that would accompany a proposed immigration legalization bill.

The Washington Times reports:

Mr. Deffer said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, is in the midst of trying to move from being a paper-based system to having electronic records. He warned that adding millions of new applications, as the bill would do, would be a bad idea.

“Adding 12 million more people to the system would be the mother of all backlogs. Clearly to us the systems could not handle it now,” Mr. Deffer told the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee. “It’s going to take a few years, so it’s something for Congress to consider that, when they implement this, they don’t have a date too soon.”

But Alejandro Mayorkas, director of USCIS, thinks otherwise. “We will be ready for comprehensive immigration reform when it is enacted,” Mayorkas said after the hearing, according to the Times.