It is not a surprise to see where the priorities are in the spending bill making its way through the House of Representatives.  The House Appropriations Committee passed a Bill this week that will go to the floor of the House possibly next week.  We highlight the money trail here:

USCIS:  Approximately 1/3 of the requested funding was approved

1. Fee Reform: The Administration’s fee reform effort would receive no funding.  The Administration requested $207 million for the processing of refugee and asylum applications, for which there is no charge.
2. Immigrant Integration: The Administration requested $19.75 million for immigrant integration programs and for the operations of the Office of Citizenship.  The Committee rejected the request.  In its report on the bill, the Committee noted that it “supports the efforts of the Office of Citizenship to promote civic education through the naturalization process.”  Not, apparently, enough to provide funding for this purpose.

Enforcement

While the Committee couldn’t find any money for immigrant integration, costs concerns were not a factor in enforcement budgets.  Customs and Border Protection got $8.77 billion—$44 million more than the President asked for in his budget, and more than half a billion dollars more than allocated in FY 2011.  Within that amount, border security between ports of entry gets $3.62 billion, $191 million more than last year—enough to bring the Border Patrol up to 21,370 agents.

ICE was allocated $5.5 billion, $25.6 million more than the President requested and $84.8 million more than in 2011.  Secure Communities got $194 million, $10 million more than the President requested.  ICE Detention and Removal operations were awarded $2.75 billion, $26.7 million more than the President asked for, to raise the minimum number of detention bed spaces that ICE must maintain on a daily basis from 33,400 bed spaces to 34,000—and the Committee directs ICE “to intensify its enforcement efforts and fully utilize these resources.”

As part of his enforcement-only agenda, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) is expected to introduce a bill that would make the use of the E-Verify electronic work authorization verification system mandatory for all businesses in the U.S.

There is still no sign that Republicans who now control the Judiciary Committee (having jurisdiction over immigration) will attempt to seriously address any legal or illegal immigration reform to fix the broken system.  Despite billions of dollars being spent on immigration enforcement, and enforcement “benchmarks” set in the last round of immigration reform, legislative efforts having been largely met and the  Republicans continue to call for yet more enforcement.  They continue to move the goalpost.

For more information on this subject, we link to, “E-Verify Without Reform Cannot Succeed,” and listen to a recording of a National Immigration Forum briefing for reporters on the E-Verify program.

For more on this as well as the mandatory E-Verify Bill expected in June, we link to the National Immigration Forum’s Policy Update

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2011 at 10:17 am and is filed under Customs & Border Protection(CBP), Department Of Homeland Security (DHS), I-9/E-Verify News, Immigration Legislation, USCIS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.