Thread by @matt_cam

13,400 employees of a mismanaged federal agency are losing their paychecks at the worst possible time--a scandal by any definition, but even worse when you factor in the many thousands of immigrants with pending citizenship applications who now may not be able to vote in November

https://twitter.com/gsiskind/status/1277707922768879617

USCIS has always been 95%+ funded by the extremely expensive filing fees paid by immigrants themselves. This is why it never closes even during government shutdowns, and why it hasn't depended on Congressional appropriations generally.

So how did this happen? A few things:

DHS claims that new filings have been way down since the #COVID19 lockdowns began. And I'm sure that's true: A typical greencard through marriage costs $1760 in filing fees alone--a lot for any family facing economic uncertainty.

But there's a lot more going on here.

First, Trump's decision to cancel both Temporary Protected Status (#TPS) for most countries and #DACA for all new recipients in 9/2017 caused an immediate hit to the budget when hundreds of thousands of applicants (and their filing fees) were simply cut out

USCIS has also taken on an openly enforcement-first approach under Trump, to the point that it was actively *trying to give its own desperately-needed money to ICE* to hire 300 more officers. (This summary courtesy of @AILANational)

As @RachelMorris masterfully summarizes in this piece below--vital for understanding the current crisis--USCIS under Trump has built an "invisible wall" which has made everything much harder for everyone... including themselves. Inefficiency by design.

huffpost.com/highline/artic…

Just some of the bricks in this "invisible wall" which I can confirm as a practitioner:

-pointless & burdensome requests for evidence

-absurd, time-consuming denials rooted in no apparent reality with which I'm familiar

-ending "premium processing" for many work visas

USCIS has also been spending far more than ever on resource-intensive fraud investigations. This is a natural function of their Trump-era mission shift from customer service to "safeguarding integrity"--e.g., treating all applicants like liars/terrorists

npr.org/sections/thetw….

The $1.2 BILLION that this once proudly-self-sufficient libertarian dream of an agency is coming to Congress for is also a result of some abysmally poor planning under illegally-appointed former director Ken Cuccinelli's leadership.

migrationpolicy.org/news/uscis-sev….

Ken Cuccinelli spent most of his time as USCIS director radically politicizing the agency, & the rest of it going on TV to talk about what sister agencies were up to in what amounted to one long (and unsuccessfuly) audition for head of DHS.

c-span.org/video/?462603-…

It's the politicization I blame more than anything for this. USCIS was intended to serve as a self-powered technocracy, flying under the radar even as other agencies were battered by political winds.

Under Obama USCIS chief Cissna, it mostly was. Never perfect, but always good.

If only there had been a brilliant, witty, and maybe even unexpectedly handsome prophet to warn us of this coming doom. If only

https://twitter.com/matt_cam/status/1170069200922185729

Politicization of national immigration services--not the laws and policies, which will always be political by definition, but the SERVICES THEMSELVES--is not something which healthy democracies allow, and for good reason. It's just too important.

But here we are.

Immigration agencies literally create voters. Effectively suspending nearly all naturalization applications when they would have otherwise been processed and new citizens sworn in well ahead of the November election is... well, it's not great is it?

There's a parallel here to what Rs did to the US Postal Service by forcing a vital & self-funded public utility into the red. It was originally to force privatization, but at a time when mail-in ballots will decide the election is now far more sinister

cnn.com/2020/06/15/pol…

USCIS processes and adjudicates, among other things:

-asylum
-citizenship
-employment visas
-family (often incorrectly called "chain migration") visas

All of these things are not only not Trump priorities, but the OPPOSITE of Trump priorities. It's just kind of right there.

Trump and his postmodern Know Nothings have been constantly repeating the same line for years now: "We love immigrants, so long as they do it LEGALLY."

Not a single word of that has ever been true, and if you didn't already know that you sure do now.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1016655846502273026

Quick footnote since I mentioned them: the Know Nothings were in many ways the closest thing to Trump before Trump--although they were in many ways far more progressive and arguably less racist, despite literally being founded on and fueled by open racism

smithsonianmag.com/history/immigr…

CORRECTION: Francis Cissna was appointed by Trump, I thought he'd carried over for some reason, but scratch the reference to him in this tweet and just leave it as a commentary on Obama's USCIS

A second footnote: I'd meant to mention before that the harsh, complex, and burdensome new #StephenMiller #publiccharge rule (which went into effect about a month before lockdowns) also no doubt drastically reduced applicants and their fees as well