Posted: 5/29/2007 5:56:55 PM EDT
WHAT'S HAPPENING TO MY COUNTRY?  This is exactly what happened with the 1986 amnesty. Hundreds of thousands streamed across the border to fraudulently apply. Caseworkers found 398,000 cases of fraud - and no one knows how much fraud went undetected. So let's assume (conservatively) that 12 million illegals apply for the amnesty within the year allowed. Since the federal government is open for business 250 days a year, there will be an average of 48,000 amnesty applications every day. USCIS now has about 3,000 "adjudicators" - the caseworkers who'd have to process the Z-visa applications. The Senate bill would only add 100 a year for five years - "subject to the availability of appropriations." And it wouldn't be easy to expand the force much faster, due to the difficulty of hiring and training new adjudicators. So, we have 3,000 people hit with 48,000 applications a day. Of course, on some days - or in some offices - the number could easily double. And with each application, the adjudicator has only one day to determine if the alien is a criminal or a national security threat. It gets worse. Those numbers assume that the adjudicators aren't already busy. In fact, they're swamped. IN FY 2005, USCIS received 6.3 million applications - on top of a backlog of several million unresolved applications. The agency is stretched to the breaking point, according to a 2006 study by the federal Government Accountability Office. That report noted that, because adjudicators must go through so many applications for benefits (for green cards, asylum and much more) every day, they spend too little time scrutinizing them. As a result, the GAO concluded, failure to detect fraud is already "an ongoing and serious problem." The back-breaking workload results in what the GAO calls a "high pressure production environment." It is widely known that an unofficial "six-minute rule" applies - spend no more than six minutes looking at any single application. It's a bureaucratic sweatshop. Adjudicators told the GAO that their managers were consumed with meeting "production goals," driving the workers to process applications too quickly and increasing the risk of undetected fraud. Cash rewards are even given to the adjudicators who can work the fastest. original article |