ARIZONA REPUBLIC May 15, 2006 A long wait Tighter limits on immigration visas Swell backlog of requests to enter the U.S. legally And can divide families for many years Mike Madden and Daniel González
The Arizona Republic Angelina Careaga picked up the phone one day in 1999 at her home in El Mirage. It was her younger sister Selia, calling from Mexico.
Unmarried and alone, Selia wanted to come live with Angelina and her family in the United States.
Selia could pay a smuggler and sneak into the country illegally, bypassing the wait for an immigrant visa.
"She thought it was the solution, because that's what everyone else did," recalled Careaga, 56, who cleans houses in Sun City.
No, Careaga told her. Wait for permission to come legally. Applying for an immigrant visa shouldn't take long, Careaga reasoned, because Careaga was a naturalized U.S. citizen. But six years after applying, Careaga is still waiting for Selia, 47, to receive her immigrant visa. Most likely, she'll wait another six or seven years.
Permission for a relative to come to the U.S. is hard to get under current immigration laws, even for U.S. citizens like Careaga. When she applied, Careaga was unaware of the long backlogs caused by limits the U.S. sets on green cards available for workers and relatives of U.S. citizens, and by caps on the number of visas allotted to immigrants from each country.
What's more, even those who qualify for visas must wait months or years for bureaucrats to process the paperwork they need, thanks to a glut of pending applications that has jammed the agency that handles them.
As Congress debates sweeping immigration reforms, Careaga's long visa delay raises a key question:
How will the nation's immigration system handle millions of additional applications should Congress pass comprehensive immigration reform allowing undocumented immigrants already here and foreign workers to apply for work permits and eventually citizenship?
The Senate this week resumes debate on a plan that would let most of the estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. get legal status and eventually apply for citizenship. It would also set up new temporary work permits that hundreds of thousands of foreigners could get each year.
Reforms might make it easier for people like Careaga's sister to come here, since current limits on green cards would be increased dramatically.
But critics and supporters of immigration reform alike worry that those changes will overwhelm U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that inspects and approves applications.
"There's going to be enormous new demands on the system, and it's guaranteed to break down," said Mark Krikorian, president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors decreasing legal and illegal immigration. An overloaded system Some would say the system is broken and that the long delays divide families needlessly and drive illegal immigration, as frustrated immigrants get tired of waiting for legal visas and sneak into the country instead.
Many of the waits are rooted in the quotas Congress has set for most immigrants. Between 416,000 and 675,000 green cards are allowed every year for immigrants sponsored by employers or by relatives who are in the U.S.
When all the visas allowed for a year are used up, new petitions are simply added to backlogs, though spouses, parents or unmarried children of U.S. citizens younger than 21 are exempt from those caps.
Although Careaga filed her visa application for Selia in January 2000, the backlog for green cards for siblings of U.S. citizens living in Mexico goes back a lot longer than that. Because of overwhelming demand, the government is just now getting to applications filed before Aug. 15, 1993, according to the State Department's May bulletin.
Altogether, about 1 million people get legal permission to move here permanently every year.
Congress also sets caps on the number of visas issued per country. No country can take more than 7 percent of the available visas each year. That has created long backlogs for Mexico, China, India and the Philippines, the countries that send the most immigrants to the U.S.
Most immigration reform proposals now in Congress would significantly increase the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country each year. A bill headed for Senate debate this week would increase the employment-based green card limit to 450,000 from 140,000 annually and allow more green cards for immigrants sponsored by relatives. That might help ease the long wait for people from Mexico. Antiquated agency But there's another problem. After waiting in line for years for a visa to become available, qualified immigrants such as Careaga's sister still have to wait months or years longer, this time for their application to be processed. The additional waits are caused by a glut of pending applications in the system.
The immigration agency inherited an outdated, overloaded system from the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was split up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Millions of applications were still in the queue. New security checks required by Congress after Sept. 11, 2001, slowed the process even more.
The agency has only 3,000 permanent staff members to handle applications, with nearly all of its $1.8 billion budget generated by fees paid by applicants. Every year, the agency processes 6 million applications.
Congress allocated $500 million in 2002 to cut down on the backlog by this October. The goal is to make sure immigrants don't wait more than six months for their case to be resolved. The agency hired 1,100 temporary workers to help process backlogged applications, and authorized overtime to speed things up.
Officials have cut the backlog to about 600,000, down from almost 4 million three years ago. Some waits still range from six months to five years. And an audit by the independent U.S. Government Accountability Office said in the fall that the agency was unlikely to meet its goals.
A follow-up this spring warned that security could be compromised if the agency works too fast to cut through the backlog. Immigration officials say they can give every application the scrutiny it needs. Future challenges Maybe so, but some wonder how the system will be able to keep up if millions of undocumented immigrants and hundreds of thousands of foreigners applying for temporary work permits and visas are added to the workload. Experts say the agency will need big help.
"There is so much focus on border enforcement and increasing worker sanctions, but anything that is done is going to have to be done at the service end," said Cecilia Menjivar, a Arizona State University sociology professor who studies the impact of immigration laws on families.
Some lawmakers say there's no way the government will be ready.
"Experience shows that overwhelmed bureaucrats will cut corners to meet deadlines or reduce workloads," said Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., who opposes letting undocumented immigrants get legal status or allowing more foreigners to work, in part because he worries about the logistics.
"It will be an invitation to fraud on a massive scale."
Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., a House co-sponsor of reform legislation such as the Senate's plan, disagreed.
He acknowledged that the immigration agency will need to improve its management of the immigration system if reforms are going to work.
But skipping the reforms for fear that the agency would be overwhelmed was not an option.
"Don't tell me it can't be done," Kolbe said. "It can be done."
The Bush administration requested millions of dollars from Congress for the next fiscal year to help set up new systems at the agency to keep from being swamped if reforms pass. That request is still pending.
Under any reform proposal, however, the agency would get some more money to do its job, because all the new applicants would pay fees that are supposed to cover the cost of processing them.
Without a plan from Congress, Dan Kane, a spokesman for the agency, refused to speculate about what it will take to handle millions of new applications. But he said the agency is prepared.
"Given that we've reduced the backlog without compromising national security, we are ready to take the next step to take on any mission Congress may ask us to undertake," Kane said.
As for Careaga, she is resigned to the 12- to 14-year wait for a green card for her sister. But she's not happy about it.
"It's not fair people have to wait so long," Careaga said. |