How the Trump administration is turning legal immigrants into undocumented ones -- by, uhh, literally turning off the printers that print the documents
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There are 100k+ immigrants here legally, whom USCIS approved for new green cards/work authorizations (or replacements of recently expired documents), and they can't get their "papers" because USCIS literally turned off the printers without telling anyone washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-t…
Until last month this green-card printing was performed by a private contractor. USCIS decided not to exercise remaining options on contract & let it lapse last month, planning to bring work in-house. But b/c USCIS is broke & not hiring, it instead just ratcheted down printing
USCIS completely shuttered one printing plant (in KY); at the other (MO) reshuffled employees from other depts & retrained to do printing. But MO plant still not at capacity. Result: huge, growing backlog of green cards/EADS that immigrants were promised that never got created
USCIS is meanwhile asking Congress for a $1.2 loan/bailout, mostly caused by political leadership's financial mismanagement, and threatening to lay off 70% of workforce.
This disruption in green card/EAD printing is a preview of what's to come if those furloughs of 70% of workforce materialize.
Meanwhile in addition to disruptions linked to budget problems, of course the administration is also taking other actions to cut back on legal immigration -- suspending green cards/visas for almost everyone applying from abroad, various processing delays for people here, etc.
As @ImmigrationMIA put it, through these kinds of actions, “The administration has accomplished its goal of shutting down legal immigration without actually changing the law.”
