No takers for a fast track to green cards

WASHINGTON: As President George Bush embarks on a mission to sell his plan to legalise as many as 12 million illegal immigrants, an Indian American official's blueprint to slash waiting times for green cards has found no takers.

Prakash Khatri, US Citizenship and Immigration Services' (USCIS) ombudsman, has presented a scheme that would reduce the wait for green cards from three years to three months, cut more than a third of the 45 hours one million applicants could expect to spend in government lines and in the process save about $350 million.

US immigration officials, however, rejected key changes proposed by him last June because ending huge immigration backlogs nationwide would rob the agency of application and renewal fees that cover 20 percent of its $1.8 billion budget, the 'Washington Post' reported citing the plan's author.

Appointed as the first USCIS Ombudsman in July 2003, it's Khatri's job to assist individuals and employers who experience problems with the agency. He also identifies systemic problems with USCIS processes and recommends solutions.

Current and former immigration officials dispute Khatri's contention saying that his plan, based on a successful pilot programme in Dallas, would be unmanageable if expanded nationwide, the Post said.

Khatri's proposal to slash green card waiting times was to assign staffers to weed out ineligible applicants and to ensure that others' forms are complete at the time of filing, cutting down caseloads and processing delays.

However, officials determined that while 'up-front' processing improved customer service at small offices, it would cost more and worsen service in busy offices because managers cannot anticipate how many people will show up, nor predict political or other circumstances that drive surges in applications, the daily said.

Still, they acknowledge financial problems and say that modernisation efforts have been delayed since 1999 by money shortages, inertia, increased security demands after the Sep 11, 2001, attacks and the disruptive launch of the Homeland Security Department.

Under the Bush backed Senate immigration legislation, USCIS would vet applications and perform security checks for illegal immigrants, a surge that would be almost triple the agency's annual caseload of five million applications.

Each application could generate fines and fees of $1,000 to $5,000, a windfall of $10 billion to $15 billion over eight years, Homeland Security officials cited by the Washington Post said.

The money would dwarf revenue from a previously announced agency plan to increase fees on immigration and employment applications by 50 percent as early as next week, to raise $1 billion a year.

"If the USCIS fails once again to meet the challenge, the laws of supply and demand will overtake US immigration laws", driving workers and employers to bypass the law, the daily quoted James Jay Carafano, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, as saying.

Each year the agency, once known as the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, awards one million green cards, 700,000 naturalisations and one million temporary work permits.

Delays have plagued its efforts, however. After peaking at more than five million applications in 2003, the agency's backlog stood at 1.1 million last summer after a five-year, $500 million reduction effort. That includes 140,000 cases not awaiting action by another agency, the Post said.

In 2005, it raised $230 million by charging green card applicants for about one million temporary work and travel permits they needed while waiting for their cases to be processed. About 325,000 interim permits went to people whose applications were later denied, creating a security risk, Khatri was quoted as saying.

The agency raised another $139 million by charging a separate 'premium processing' fee of $1,000, three times the normal fee that is now used by a majority of applicants to speed up the process.

"If you're a good government agency, why are you trying to cheat or fool the public into thinking they have to go into first class?" Khatri asked.